PRESENT-DAY 
AMERICAN  POETRY 

H.HOUSTON  PECKHAM 


PRESENT-DAY 
AMERICAN  POETRY 

and  Other  Essays 

BY 
H.  HOUSTON  PECKHAM 


BOSTON:    RICHARD    G.    BADGER 
TORONTO:  THE  COPP  CLARK  co.,  LIMITED 


Cvpyrig'ii.  1917,  by  H.  Houston  Peckham 
All  Rights  Reserved. 


Most  of  the  essays  in  this  little  volume  appeared 
originally  in  the  South  Atlantic  Quarterly  and  are  here 
reproduced  by  courtesy  of  that  magazine.  For  per 
mission  to  include  the  last  article  in  the  volume,  the 
author  is  indebted  to  the  editor  of  The  Sewanee  Re 
view. 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America, 
The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

GEORGE  SUMMEY,  JR. 

WITHOUT   WHOSE   AID   AND    ENCOURAGEMENT  THE    FIRST 

OF  THESE    ESSAYS   WOULD   HARDLY   HAVE   BEEN 

PUBLISHED 


535  SK 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PRESENT-DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY       ...  9 

THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY     ...  24 

WANTED  :  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  LITERARY  CRITICISM  44 

THE  RETURN  TO  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY             .  53 

THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE            .          .  64 

MADISON  CAWEIN              .....  73 

LOPSIDED  REALISM            .....  80 

Is  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?           .         .  89 


PRESENT-DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 
AND  OTHER    ESSAYS 


io      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

public  contumely;  and  that  Shelley  and  Keats  suffered 
as  much  ridicule  as  any  two  men  who  ever  wrote  rimes. 
Yes,  perhaps  this  is  an  age  of  prose.  Doubtless 
many  of  us  find  golden  dollars  more  alluring  than  golden 
daffodils,  and  commerce  more  attractive  than  art. 
But  the  person  who  is  continually  emphasizing  this 
fact  forgets  that  from  time  immemorial,  the  people  of 
western  Europe,  especially  the  Anglo-Saxons,  have 
been  a  race  of  traders  and  will  undoubtedly  continue 
to  be  so  to  the  end  of  their  racial  existence.  He  also 
forgets  that  if  this  is  an  age  which  loves  material  gain 
it  is  also  an  age  of  child-labor  laws,  sanitary  com 
missions,  social  settlements,  societies  for  the  prevention 
of  cruelty  to  children  and  dumb  animals,  well  organized 
municipal  charities,  and  various  other  humanitarian 
activities.  Well,  then,  if  it  is  idealism  which  makes 
for  appreciation  of  the  fine  arts,  surely  we  possess  as 
high  an  idealism  as  did  the  Elizabethans,  who  used  to 
flog  women,  hang  petty  thieves,  and  take  keen  delight 
in  the  torture  of  dumb  brutes.  Materialistic  we 
twentieth-century  Americans  may  be;  but  in  this 
respect  we  are  not  so  different  from  our  ancestors  as 
we  sometimes  imagine  ourselves.  Like  our  progenitors, 
we  trade  and  traffic  a  great  deal;  but,  like  them  also, 
we  enjoy  some  of  the  finer  things  of  life  too.  If  any 
thing  ails  us  at  all,  it  is  self-consciousness.  Like  the 
little  girl  who  felt  herself  grown  too  big  to  play  with 
dolls  but  surreptitiously  fondled  dolly  in  a  secluded 
corner,  we  scoff  at  poetry  in  public  and  enjoy  it  in 
secret.  Our  emotions  are  much  more  guarded,  of 
course,  in  the  theatre  than  in  our  private  libraries. 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY       n 

We  like  poetry,  even  contemporary  poetry;  but  we 
are  not  willing  to  admit  it.  Instead  of  lauding  our 
present-day  bards,  we  assume  an  unbending  attitude 
and  declare  that  we  hunger  for  really  great  poetry,  but 
protest  that  the  verses  of  our  living  writers  are  so 
puerile,  so  trivial  that  we  cannot  condescend  to  notice 
them. 

And  at  this  juncture  it  devolves  upon  me  to  point 
out  the  falsity  of  the  assertion  that  present-day  Ameri 
can  poetry  is  lacking  in  merit.  That,  as  is  often  stated, 
the  United  States  to-day  boasts  no  poet  comparable 
to  Alfred  Noyes,  John  Masefield,  or  William  Watson 
is  doubtless  true.  But  what  of  it?  Fifty  years  ago 
it  might  have  been  stated  with  equal  truth  that  no  poet 
on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  was  nearly  so  great  as 
Tennyson  or  Browning.  Surely  the  fact  that  contem 
porary  American  poetry  is  inferior  to  contemporary 
British  poetry  does  not  prove  that  our  poetry  is  in 
a  state  of  decline.  At  most  it  proves  merely  that  we 
have  not  yet  outgrown  our  youngness  and  crudeness — 
have  not  yet  become  as  cultivated  as  our  mother 
nation. 

"But,"  insist  the  pessimists,  "What  names  has  the 
past  twenty  years  brought  forth,  worthy  of  mention  in 
the  same  breath  with  the  names  of  Bryant,  Emerson, 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Poe,  Holmes,  Whitman,  Lowell, 
and  Lanier?"  In  this  connection,  permit  me  to 
suggest  that  history  has  not  yet  had  time  to  fix  the 
ultimate  standing  of  such  names  as  Stedman,  Aldrich, 
Stoddard,  Gilder,  Hovey,  Moody,  and  Cawein;  and 
allow  me  to  invite  your  fair,  respectful  consideration 


12      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

of  the  work  of  such  living  writers  as  Edwin  Arlington 
Robinson,  Edith  M.  Thomas,  Edwin  Markham, 
Henry  Van  Dyke,  Josephine  Preston  Peabody,  and 
Percy  Mackaye. 

Without  attempting  to  fix  the  status  of  the  chief 
living  American  poets  as  compared  with  their  pre 
decessors,  I  shall  call  attention  to  the  well  known  and 
freely  admitted  fact  that  from  a  technical  standpoint 
the  minor  American  poetry  of  to-day  is  much  better 
than  that  of  a  generation  or  two  ago.  Whittier  once 
remarked  that  if  he  were  to  venture  south  of  Mason 
and  Dixon's  line,  he  would  be  hanged  for  his  bad 
rimes.  He  might  have  added,  had  he  been  a  good 
prognosticator,  that  some  of  his  most  characteristic 
verses  were  so  badly  written  that  they  would  hardly 
find  acceptance  in  any  reputable  twentieth-century 
magazine. 

But  what  of  the  charges  most  frequently  made 
against  contemporary  American  poetry? 

One  charge  is  that  our  most  representative  poetry  is 
totally  lacking  in  originality,  both  of  form  and  of 
subject  matter.  Our  poets,  it  seems,  sing  of  love,  of 
ethics,  of  nature,  of  great  public  events  and  crises, 
just  as  poets  were  wont  to  sing  long  before  there  was 
an  American  nation.  Moreover,  instead  of  inventing 
new  verse-forms,  our  latter-day  bards  cling  to  such  old 
forms  as  blank  verse,  the  sonnet,  the  quatrain,  and  so 
on.  Well  and  good,  granting  that  all  this  is  so,  is  this 
necessarily  a  point  against  our  current  poetry?  Does 
the  fact  that  in  the  remote  past  such  poets  as  Homer 
and  Sappho  and  Theocritus  discovered  the  true  poetic 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      13 

subjects  prove  that  modern  poets,  in  order  to  be  as 
great  as  they,  must  invent  new  subjects?  Would  it  be 
fair  to  say  that  just  because  Petrarch  wrote  sonnets 
nearly  three  hundred  years  before  Milton  was  born, 
the  sonnets  of  Milton  are  therefore  inferior  to  those  of 
the  Italian  poeti  Does  the  fact  that  Walt  Whitman 
is  by  far  the  most  strikingly  original  poet  that  America 
has  yet  produced  necessarily  prove  that  he  is  the 
greatest  of  our  bards?  Verily,  emulation  may  be  as 
true  a  virtue  as  originality;  but  were  it  not,  we  could 
easily  give  the  lie  to  the  allegation  that  present-day 
American  poetry  is  totally  lacking  in  originality.  To 
do  this,  we  have  only  to  call  attention  to  a  few  such 
titles  as  the  following,  selected  at  random  from  the 
leading  magazines  of  the  past  ten  years:  "From  A 
Skyscraper",  "On  A  Subway  Express",  "Pittsburgh", 
"The  Song  of  the  Wireless  Telegraph",  "The  Power- 
. plant",  "Airships". 

A  second  charge  brought  against  contemporary 
American  poetry — a  charge  which  flatly  contradicts 
the  first — is  that  much  of  our  poetry  is  altogether  too 
original,  or  rather  that  it  is  so  bizarre  that  it  has  little 
to  commend  it  except  originality.  As  Edwin  Ar 
lington  Robinson  remarked,  in  a  recent  interview  with 
Joyce  Kilmer  in  the  New  York  Times  magazine  section : 
"More  than  ever  before,  oddity  and  violence  are 
bringing  into  prominence  poets  who  have  little  besides 
these  two  qualities  to  offer  the  world. "  If  Mr.  Robin 
son,  in  making  this  statement,  had  in  mind  the  vers 
libre  of  such  poets  as  Amy  Lowell,  Edgar  Lee  Masters, 
and  Ezra  Pound,  his  judgment  is  doubtless  correct. 


14        PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

This,  however,  is  entirely  inadequate  as  a  wholesale 
condemnation  of  modern  American  poetry,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  vers  libre,  whatever  merits  or  de 
merits  it  may  possess,  is  by  no  means  typical  of  the 
best  or  most  characteristic  tendencies  in  our  latter-day 
verse. 

A  third  charge  brought  against  contemporary 
American  poetry  is  that  our  bards  are  mere  pleasing 
rimesters  or  dainty  word-painters,  who  play  us  de 
lectable  little  tunes  or  paint  us  pretty  pictures,  but 
have  no  sterner  stuff,  no  philosophy,  to  offer  us.  In 
answer  to  this  charge,  let  me  quote  Edith  M.  Thomas's 
sonnet,  "Music",  assuredly  an  exquisite  picture,  but 
quite  as  assuredly  a  pregnant  bit  of  philosophy  to  all 
who  realize  the  charm  of  nature  and  of  harmony: 

The  god  of  music  dwelleth  out  of  doors, 

All  seasons  through  his  minstrelsy  we  meet, 

Breathing    by    field    and    covert    haunting-sweet: 

From  organ-lofts  in  forests  old  he  pours 

A  solemn  harmony;  on  leafy  floors 

To  smooth  autumnal  pipes  he  moves  his  feet, 

Or  with  the  tingling  spectrum  of  the  sleet 

In  winter  keen  picks  out  his  thrilling  scores. 

Leave  me  the   reed   unplucked   beside   the   stream, 

And  he  will  stoop  and  fill  it  with  the  breeze; 

Leave  me  the  viol's  frame  in  secret  trees, 

Unwrought,  and  it  shall  wake  a  druid  theme; 

Leave   me   the   whispering   shell   on    nereid    shores: 

The  god  of  music  dwelleth  out  of  doors. 

In  the  same  connection  let  me  cite  Louis  Unter- 
meyer's  "Voices,"  a  piece  which  appeared  several 
years  ago  in  Hampton's'. 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      15 

All  day  with  anxious  heart  and  wondering  ear 
I  listened  to  the  city;  heard  the  ground 
Echo  with  human  thunder,  and  the  sound 
Go  reeling  down  the  streets  and  disappear. 
The  headlong  hours  in  their  wild  career 
Shouted  and  sang  until  the  world  was  drowned 
With    babel-voices,    each    one    more    pro 
found     .... 
All  day  it  surged — but  nothing  could  I  hear: 

That   night   the   country   never   seemed    so   still: 

The  trees  and  grasses  spoke  without  a  word 

To  stars  that  brushed  them  with  their  silver  wings. 

Together  with  the  moon  I  climbed  the  hill 

And  in  the  very  heart  of  silence  heard 

The  speech  and  music  of  immortal  things. 

The  erroneous  idea  that  present-day  American  poetry 
is  devoid  of  \igorous  philosophy  probably  arises  from 
the  fact  that  our  poets  no  longer  moralize  after  the 
.manner  of  Whittier  or  Longfellow — that  is,  they  have 
long  ago  ceased  to  spoil  good  descriptions  or  narratives 
by  writing  postscripts  in  the  form  of  one-stanza  homi 
lies. 

Another  arraignment  made  against  our  contemporary 
verse  is  that  it  is  singularly  lacking  in  quotable  lines  or 
passages.  This  arraignment  is  probably  fair,  except 
as  applied  to  Dr.  Van  Dyke's  verses;  but  far  from 
proving  our  twentieth-century  poetry  to  be  weak,  it 
proves  rather,  I  should  say,  that  our  verse  is  becoming 
so  exquisitely  unified  that  to  take  from  a  poem  any 
integral  part  of  it  is  to  destroy  the  whole  fabric.  The 
two  sonnets  which  I  have  just  quoted  will  serve  as 
illustrations  of  this  point. 


16      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Still  another  stricture  which  the  captious  frequently 
make  upon  our  latter-day  poetry  is  that  no  really 
noteworthy  poems  have  been  written  for  more  than  a 
generation.  Let  me  remind  those  who  make  this 
complaint  that  Edwin  Markham's  "The  Man  with  the 
Hoe",  William  Vaughn  Moody's  "Ode  in  Time  of 
Hesitation",  Robert  H.  Schauffler's  "Scum  o'  the 
Earth",  Vachel  Lindsay's  "General  Booth  Enters 
Heaven",  and  Robert  Frost's  "North  of  Boston"  are 
all  products  of  the  past  twenty  years. 

A  final  objection  made  to  current  American  verse  is 
that  our  chief  poets  are  producing  nothing  but  short 
lyrics.  At  first  glance,  this  appears  to  be  a  truly  valid 
objection.  We  are  still  waiting  for  the  great  American 
epic,  and  there  is  no  indication  that  we  shall  not  con 
tinue  to  wait  for  a  long  time.  None  of  our  younger 
poets  seem  inclined  to  attempt  any  work  of  like  pro 
portions  to  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes's  "Drake,  An  English 
Epic";  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  foremost  of 
our  older  living  singers  are  lyrists,  and  lyrists  exclusive 
ly.  But  here  is  a  very  important  fact  that  we  must 
not  lose  sight  of:  two  of  our  younger  bards,  Josephine 
Preston  Peabody  and  Percy  Mackaye,  have  within 
the  past  decade  brought  out  some  plays  of  surpassing 
excellence.  Hauptmann  in  Germany,  D'Annunzio  in 
Italy,  Rostand  in  France,  and  Stephen  Phillips  in 
England  have  given  the  literary  world  nothing  finer  in 
a  dramatic  way  than  Mr.  Mackaye's  "Sappho  and 
Phaon",  "Fenris  the  Wolf",  "Jeanne  D'Arc",  and 
"The  Scarecrow";  and  Mrs.  (Peabody)  Marks's  "Mar 
lowe"  and  "The  Piper". 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      17 

Turning,  however,  from  a  negative  to  a  positive 
consideration  of  our  subject,  what,  specifically,  are 
some  of  the  praiseworthy  qualities  in  present-day 
American  poetry?  First  of  all,  let  me  call  attention  to 
the  generally  conceded  fact  that  our  later  poets  have 
attained  to  a  perfection  of  form  unknown  in  the  days 
of  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  and  only  approached,  not 
equalled,  by  such  transition  poets  as  Stedman,  Lanier, 
and  Aldrich.  As  examples  of  exquisite  craftsmanship, 
note  these  two  stanzas  from  the  late  Madison  Cawein's 
"Serenade": 

The  pink  rose  drops  its  petals  on 

The  moonlit  lawn,  the  moonlit  lawn; 

The  moon,  like  some  wild  rose  of  white, 

Drops  down  the  summer  night. 

No  rose  there  is 

As  sweet  as  this — 

Thy  mouth,  that  greets  me  with  a  kiss. 

The  lattice  of  thy  casement  twines 

With  jasmine  vines,  with  jasmine  vines; 

The  stars,  like  jasmine  blossoms,  lie 

About  the  glimmering  sky. 

No  jasmine  tress 

Can  so  caress 

As  thy  white  arms'  soft  loveliness. 

Here  we  have  an  intricacy  of  arrangement,  a  subtleness 
of  melody,  an  exquisiteness  of  euphony,  and  an  accuracy 
of  meter  which  remind  us  forcibly  of  Lanier;  but 
Cawein's  poem  is  totally  free  from  that  straining  of 
diction,  that  artificiality,  that  groping  for  rimes,  which 
mars  some  of  Lanier's  most  characteristic  work. 


1 8      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Closely  akin  to  this  perfection  of  form  is  the  striking, 
superlative  beauty  which  some  of  our  recent  poems 
possess.  As  illustration  of  this,  I  shall  quote  another 
Cawein  passage,  this  one  from  "Vagabonds": 

Your  heart's  a-tune  with  April  and  mine  a-tune  with 

June, 

So  let  us  go  a-roving  beneath  the  summer  moon: 
Oh,  was  it  in  the  sunlight,  or  was  it  in  the  rain, 
We  met  among  the  blossoms  within  the  locust  lane? 
All  that  I  can  remember  's  the  bird  that  sang  aboon, 
And  with  its  music  in  our  hearts  we'll  rove  beneath  the 

moon. 


It  will  not  be  forever,  yet  merry  goes  the  tune 

While  we  still  go  a-roving  beneath  the  summer  moon: 

A  cabin,  in  the  clearing,  of  flickering  firelight 

When  old-time  lanes  we  strolled  in  the  winter  snows 

make  white: 

Where  we  can  nod  together  above  the  logs  and  croon 
The  songs  we  sang  when  roving  beneath  the  summer 

moon. 

For  winsome,  compelling  tunefulness  those  lines  may 
fittingly  be  mentioned  in  the  same  category  with  some 
of  the  most  musical  lines  of  Shelley,  William  Blake,  and 
Swinburne. 

Another  noteworthy  characteristic  of  present-day 
American  poetry  is  the  fulness,  vividness,  and  accuracy 
with  which  it  deals  with  nature.  Note,  in  this  con 
nection,  a  couple  of  stanzas  from  Dr.  Van  Dyke's 
delightful  little  poem,  "Spring  in  the  South": 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      19 

Bluejays  fluttering,  yodeling  and  crying, 

Meadow-larks  sailing  low  above  the  faded  grass, 
Red-birds  whistling  clear,  silent  robins  flying, — 

What  has  waked  the  birds  up?  What  has  come  to 
pass? 


Now  on  the  plum  the  snowy  bloom  is  sifted, 

Now  on  the  peach  the  glory  of  the  rose, 
Over  the  hills  a  tender  haze  is  drifted, 

Full  to  the  brim  the  yellow  river  flows. 
Dark  cypress  boughs  with  vivid  jewels  glisten, 

Greener  than  emeralds  shining  in  the  sun, 
Who    has    wrought    the    magic?     Listen,    sweetheart, 

listen! 

The    mocking-bird    is    singing.     Spring   has    begun. 

For  vividness  of  imagery  and  variety  of  sensations, 
these  lines  are  hardly  surpassed,  even  by  Tennyson's 
best  nature  poetry  or  Matthew  Arnold's  "Thyrsis". 
Still  another  notable  quality  of  our  recent  poetry  is 
its  effective  conciseness.  Brian  Hooker,  in  an  article 
on  "Present  American  Poetry",  in  the  August,  1909, 
number  of  The  Forum,  bewails  the  fact  that  nowadays 
our  magazines  are  seldom  willing  to  buy  poems  of  more 
than  thirty  lines'  length;  but  when  we  find  a  dramatic 
theme  treated  with  the  powerful  terseness  which 
characterizes  Cawein's  poem  "Lynchers",  we  may 
well  be  grateful  to  the  magazine  editors  for  their  policy 
of  insistence  on  brevity.  Here  is  the  poem: 

At  the  moon's  down-going,  let  it  be 

On  the  quarry  hill  with  its  one  gnarled  tree 

The  red-rock  road  of  the  underbrush, 


20      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Where  the  woman  came  through  the  summer  hush. 

The  sumach  high,  and  the  elder  thick, 

Where  we  found  the  stone  and  the  ragged  stick. 

The  trampled  road  of  the  thicket,  full 

Of  footprints  down  to  the  quarry  pool. 

The  rocks  that  ooze  with  the  hue  of  lead, 

Where  we  found  her  lying  stark  and  dead. 

The  scraggy  wood;  the  negro  hut, 

With  its  doors  and  windows  locked  and  shut. 

A  secret  signal;  a  foot's  rough  tramp; 

A  knock  at  the  door;  a  lifted  lamp. 

An  oath;  a  scuffle;  a  ring  of  masks; 

A  voice  that  answers  a  voice  that  asks. 

A  group  of  shadows;  the  moon's  red  fleck; 

A  running  noose  and  a  man's  bared  neck. 

A  word,  a  curse,  and  a  shape  that  swings; 

The  lonely  night  and  a  bat's  black  wings 

At  the  moon's  down-going,  let  it  be 

On  the  quarry  hill  with  its  one  gnarled  tree. 

A  final  characteristic  which  I  remark  in  the  American 
poetry  of  our  day  is  the  realism  and  vividness  with 
which  contemporary  subjects  are  treated.  As  social 
documents  of  their  age,  some  of  the  most  characteristic 
of  twentieth-century  American  poems  are  scarcely 
surpassed  in  world  literature.  "Lynchers"  illustrates 
this  fact,  and  the  fact  is  more  broadly  illustrated  by 
James  Oppenheim's  "Saturday  Night",  three  stanzas 
of  which  I  quote  herewith: 

The  lights  of  Saturday  night  beat  golden,  golden  over 

the  pillared  street, 
The  long  plate-glass  of  a  Dream-World  olden  is  as  the 

footlights  shining  sweet. 
Street-lamp — flambeau — glamour     of    trolley — comet- 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      21 

trail  of  the  trains  above, 

Flash  where  the  jostling  crowds  are  jolly  with  echoing 
laughter  and  human  love. 

The  leather  of  shoes  in  the  brilliant  casement  sheds  a 

lustre  over  the  heart; 
The  high-heaped  fruit  in  the  flaring  basement  glows 

with  the  tints  of  Turner's  art. 
Darwin's  dream  and  the  eye  of  Spencer  saw  .not  such  a 

gloried  race 
As  here  in  copper  light  intenser  than  desert  sun  glides 

face  by  face. 

This  drab  washwoman  dazed  and  breathless,  ray- 
chiseled  in  the  golden  stream, 

Is  a  magic  statue  standing  deathless — her  tub  and 
soap-suds  touched  with  Dream. 

Yea,  in  this  people,  glamour-sunnied,  democracy  wins 
heaven  again; 

Here  the  unlearned  and  the  unmoneyed  laugh  in  the 
lights  of  Lover's  Lane. 

Why,  then,  all  this  hue  and  cry  about  the  decline 
of  American  poetry?  If  the  American  muse  really 
is  in  a  state  of  decline,  she  is  an  amazingly  robust, 
healthy  invalid.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  our  present-day 
poetry,  instead  of  showing  signs  of  decadency,  is  excep 
tionally  good.  More  than  that,  there  is  every  reason 
why  it  should  be,  and — despite  Macaulay's  dogmatic 
assertion  that  in  an  age  of  enlightenment  there  will  be 
little  poetry — no  reason  why  it  should  not.  If,  as  is 
often  said,  we  are  a  people  occupied  with  prosaic,  mate 
rialistic  pursuits,  then  so  much  the  more  reason  why 
we  should  turn,  for  recreation,  to  an  emotional  art  such 
as  poetry.  Furthermore,  our  bigness,  our  variedness, 


22      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

our  cosmopolitanism,  and  our  lessons  from  the  past 
furnish  us  with  a  field  of  inspiration  beside  which  even 
that  of  the  Elizabethans  was  small  indeed.  And  better 
still,  like  every  healthy  young  nation  which  is  ripening 
into  maturity,  we  are  growing  in  artistic  consciousness, 
improving  in  aesthetic  taste.  Influential  persons  are 
showing  a  marked  interest  in  poetry;  new  magazines 
devoted  exclusively  to  verse  are  being  established; 
poetic  prizes  are  being  offered  annually;  theatrical 
managers  are  displaying  an  increased  willingness  to 
produce  worthy  poetic  plays  from  the  pens  of  native 
writers;  and  best  of  all,  decidedly  promising  new  poets 
are  appearing,  the  excellent  work  of  some  of  our 
youngest  bards,  notably  James  Oppenheim,  John  G. 
Neihardt,  Sara  Teasdale,  Louis  Untermeyer,  Joyce 
Kilmer,  William  Rose  Benet,  and  John  Hall  Wheelock, 
attesting  to  this  fact. 

I  have  purposely  avoided  comparing  any  individual 
present-day  poet  or  poets  with  Longfellow,  Poe, 
Whitman,  Lowell,  or  any  other  bard  who  graced  the 
"golden"  period  of  American  literature:  not  because 
I  fear  to  meet  the  issue,  nor  because  I  dislike  to  lay 
myself  open  to  the  charge  of  heresy;  but  because  the 
achievements  of  the  present  can  be  viewed  with  much 
more  discernment  and  in  much  truer  perspective 
thirty  years  from  now  than  now.  The  old  proverb 
about  distance  and  enchantment  is  as  true  here  as 
elsewhere.  We  have  only  to  let  the  future  sit  in  judg 
ment  as  to  the  relative  merit  of  our  contemporary 
poetry,  and  if  we  live  to  be  grey-beards  we  shall  doubt 
less  see  young  critics  unconsciously  following  tradition 


PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY      23 

and  solemnly  trying  to  explain  why  the  poetry  of  1946 
is  not  so  great  as  that  which  1916  produced. 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY 

THE  heart  of  the  child  and  the  mind  of  the  man 
are  in  him,"  says  Hamilton  W.  Mabie  in 
speaking  of  Alfred  Noyes,  the  greatest  of  living 
English  poets;  and  Mr.  Mabie  could  not  have  made  a 
statement  more  fortunate;  for  rarely  indeed  does  one 
find  so  happy  a  combination  of  youthful  spontaneity 
and  mature  insight  as  the  work  of  Mr.  Noyes  exhibits. 

I  have  used  an  out-and-out  superlative  in  speaking 
of  Mr.  Noyes:  I  have  referred  to  him  as  the  greatest 
living  English  poet.  I  have  no  apologies,  no  retrac 
tions,  to  make;  for  with  all  due  regard  for  the  highly 
creditable  work  of  William  Watson,  John  Masefield, 
Laurence  Binyon,  A.  E.  Housman,  Henry  Newbolt, 
John  Drinkwater,  W.  H.  Davies,  and  (formerly;  but, 
alas,  not  now)  Rudyard  Kipling,  I  can  think  of  no 
English  poet  of  this  generation  who  can  be  considered 
the  equal  of  Alfred  Noyes. 

Now  let  us  see  just  what  claims  Mr.  Noyes  has  to  the 
high  place  which  I  would  accord  him.  Here  are  a  few 
of  the  accomplishments  which  this  young  man  of 
thirty-six  years  already  has  to  his  credit:  more  verse 
and  more  good  verse  than  any  of  his  contemporaries 
have  brought  out;  the  biggest  English  poem  and  only 
real  epic  since  the  completion  of  Tennyson's  "Idylls  of 
the  King";  the  finest  Spenserian  stanzas,  by  a  long 
way,  since  those  of  Byron  and  Shelley;  one  of  the  best 
poetic  dramas  of  recent  times;  and — some  of  the  mot 
exquisite  word-melodies  that  merry  old  England  has 

24 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    25 

ever  heard.  But  these  are  only  a  few  of  the  attain 
ments  of  Mr.  Noyes.  Any  adequate  commentary  on 
his  work  must  note  also  that  he  is  a  poet  of  marvelous 
range,  both  in  matter  and  in  manner;  that  he  is  a 
follower  of  the  best  traditions  of  English  poetry,  yet 
thoroughly  modern  and  strikingly  original;  and  that 
he  is  philosopher  as  well  as  artist,  prophet  as  well  as 
poet. 

Mr.  Noyes's  first  collection  of  poems,  "The  Loom  of 
Years",  appeared  in  1902,  and  since  that  time  he  has 
brought  out  an  average  of  about  one  volume  a  year. 
His  fecundity  is  simply  astounding,  scarcely  a  month 
going  by  that  at  least  one  new  poem  from  his  pen  does 
not  appear  in  some  magazine.  Brian  Hooker  made  a 
very  clever  remark  when  he  said  of  Noyes:  "He  writes 
with  a  sort  of  divine  garrulity — a  poetic  prodigal, 
shaking  a  sunlit  mane  and  singing  loudly  and  sweetly 
across  the  morning."  That  so  prolific  a  poet  should 
sometimes  write  some  very  bad  verses  would  seem 
almost  inevitable;  but  if  Mr.  Noyes  has  yet  written 
anything  bad,  he  has  not  allowed  it  to  find  its  way  into 
print.  If  we  needed  any  proof  of  the  average  quality 
of  his  work,  we  could  point  to  the  fact  that  more  than 
half  of  his  poems  are  first  published  in  that  pre-  eminent 
ly  respectable  literary  magazine,  Blackwood'*.  And 
as  to  his  best  work — but  that  is  another  story,  of  which 
we  shall  have  a  great  deal  to  say  presently. 

American  readers  are  so  familiar  with  Mr.  Noyes's 
recent  work — particularly  "Tales  of  the  Mermaid 
Tavern"  and  "The  Lord  of  Misrule"  collection— that 
I  purpose,  in  this  paper,  to  confine  myself  mainly  to  his 
earlier  writings. 


26      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

The  most  ambitious  piece  of  work  which  Mr.  Noyes 
has  yet  attempted,  and  in  many  respects  his  best  work, 
is  "Drake,  an  English  Epic".  This  poem  is  a  blank- 
verse  narrative  in  twelve  books,  and  deals  with  the 
exploits  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  reaching  its  climax,  of 
course,  in  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada.  The 
well-known  facts  of  Drake's  early  piratical  methods, 
his  cruise  around  Cape  Horn,  and  his  final  glorious 
victory  against  overwhelming  odds,  stand  out  prom 
inently  in  the  poem.  Queen  Elizabeth  does  not 
figure  so  conspicuously  in  the  piece  as  might  have 
been  expected;  but  if  Mr.  Noyes's  portrait  of  her  is 
slight,  it  is  at  least  excellent  as  far  as  it  goes,  and 
every  patriotic  Englishman  will  applaud  him  when  he 
enthusiastically  exclaims:  "Elizabeth,  whose  name  is 
one  forever  with  the  name  of  England." 

Under  the  most  auspicious  of  circumstances,  the 
writing  of  an  epic  poem  is  an  exceedingly  hazardous 
undertaking,  and  in  this  day  of  the  short-story  and  the 
rapidly  moving  novel  it  becomes  doubly  risky.  How 
wonderful  is  it,  then,  that  Mr.  Noyes  has  made  a 
success  of  "Drake"!  The  secret  of  his  success,  how 
ever,  is  not  hard  to  ascertain.  The  fact  is,  he  has 
performed  one  of  the  most  difficult  feats  imaginable: 
he  has  preserved  epic  dignity  and  grandeur  through 
twelve  long  books,  and  has,  at  the  same  time,  written 
a  tale  which  is  as  gripping  as  any  best-selling  novel  of 
the  season.  Moreover,  he  has  enriched  the  pages  of 
his  epic  with  descriptions  of  amazing  loveliness.  Take 
for  instance  the  words  which  Drake  speaks  as  his  little 
fleet,  bound  upon  its  great  world- journey,  passes  the 
coast  of  his  native  Devonshire: 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    27 

"Ah,  my  heart  cries  out 
We  shall  not  find  a  sweeter  land  afar 
Than  those  thyme-scented  hills  we  leave  behind! 
Soon  the  young  lambs  will  bleat  across  the  combes, 
And  breezes  will  bring  puffs  of  hawthorn   scent 
Down  Devon  lanes;  over  the  purple  moors 
Lavrocks  will  carol  and  the  plover  cry, 
The  nesting  peewit  cry;  on  village  greens 
Around  the  May-pole,  while  the  moon  hangs  low, 
The  boys  and  girls  of  England  merrily  swing 
In  country  footing  through  the  flowery  dance; 
Roses  return:  I  blame  them  not  who  stay, 
I  blame  them  not  at  all  who  cling  to  home. 
For  many  of  us  indeed  shall  not  return, 
Nor  ever  know  that  sweetness  any  more." 


Even  the  most  cursory  notice  of  Mr.  Noyes's  epic 
would  be  incomplete  without  some  mention  of  the 
love-story  of  Drake  and  Bess  of  Sydenham.  The 
objection  has  been  made  that  this  episode  is  irrelevant 
and  therefore  injurious  to  the  unity  of  the  poem  as  a 
whole;  but  the  critics  who  make  this  objection  forget 
that  the  epic  is  bound  by  no  such  laws  as  is  the  classic 
drama — that,  on  the  other  hand,  "the  whole  business 
of  life  comes  bodily  into  the  epic."  To  my  mind  the 
account  of  Drake's  love  is  one  of  the  very  best  features 
of  the  poem;  for  it  serves  to  remind  us  that  Drake  was 
something  more  than  "El  Draque",  the  terror  of  the 
Spaniards.  It  shows  us  that  the  great  admiral  had 
a  very  real  and  beautiful  human  side,  and  that  when  he 
thought  of  the  glories  he  was  winning  for  his  and 
England's  Queen,  he  thought  also  of  another  Elizabeth, 
"She,  too, a  queen,  though  crown'd 


28      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

with  milk-white  Devon  may  alone,  and  queen  but  of 
one  plot  of  meadowsweet." 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  poetic  career,  Mr. 
Noyes  has  given  evidence  of  strong  dramatic  pro 
clivities.  Especially  has  this  been  true  in  "Drake" 
and  in  his  short  narrative  poem  "Silk  o'  the  Kine". 
It  was  not  till  1911,  however,  that  he  brought  out  his 
first  play,  "Sherwood".  This  play  takes  for  its  theme 
the  Robin  Hood  legend,  and  accepts  the  tradition  that 
Robin  was  in  reality  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon.  For 
sheer  poetic  beauty  and  delicacy,  "Sherwood"  rivals 
the  best  plays  of  Tennyson,  and  although  it  has  not 
had  a  stage  presentation,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason 
why  it  should  not  prove  as  thoroughly  actable  as  any 
of  the  dramas  of  the  late  Stephen  Phillips.  Among 
the  familiar  characters  we  meet  in  "Sherwood"  are 
("Maid")  Marian  Fitzwalter,  Will  Scarlett,  King  John, 
Queen  Elinor,  and  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion.  Oberon, 
Titania,  Puck,  and  the  other  fairies  are  there  too;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  say  when  old  Sherwood  Forest  is  most 
captivating — when  its  verdure  matches  the  jerkins  of 
the  lads  in  Lincoln  green,  or  during  those  hours  when 
the  witchery  of  blue  moonlight  and  fairy-dances  broods 
over  it.  "Sherwood"  is  romantic  to  the  core,  a  fact 
which  explains  the  charming  but  none-the-less  obvious 
air  of  unreality  pervading  the  piece  as  a  whole.  One 
and  all,  the  characters  flit  through  the  scenes,  not 
as  human  beings,  but  as  beautiful  or  monstrous  dream- 
things.  Only  one  of  the  characters,  the  cautious, 
timid  Fitzwalter,  is  of  the  earth  earthy,  and  he  is  minor. 
Robin  Hood  is  the  incarnation  of  romantic  heroism, 


THE   FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    29 

and  his  lady-love,  Maid  Marian,  is  the  quintessence  of 
superlative  loveliness.  King  John  is  a  demon,  not  a 
flesh-and-blood  man.  One  of  the  finest  characters  in 
the  play  is  Shadow-of-a-leaf,  the  Fool,  who  lives  the 
life  of  earth-folk,  yet  has  power  to  visit  fairyland  and 
commune  with  King  Oberon  and  the  other  fairies. 
While  on  one  of  his  visits  to  fairyland,  Shadow-of-a- 
leaf  discovers  that  grave  dangers  beset  his  earthly 
sovereign,  Robin  Hood,  and  his  heart  feels  a  mighty 
desire  to  warn  Robin;  but  to  warn  Robin  would  be  to 
break  his  fairy  vows,  and  this  would  mean  eternal 
banishment  from  fairyland,  and  ultimately  the  death 
that  all  mortals  die.  Beautiful  indeed  is  the  scene  in 
which  Shadow-of-a-leaf  sacrifices  his  future  in  an  effort 
to  save  his  master.  The  gates  of  fairyland  are  closed 
against  him  forever,  but  as  Oberon  touchingly  says: 

"We  fairies  have  not  known  or  heard 
What  waits  for  those  who,  like  this  wandering  Fool, 
Throw  all  away  for  love.     But  I  have  heard 
There  is  a  great  King,  out  beyond  the  world; 
Not    Richard,     who    is     dead,     nor    yet  King  John; 
But  a  great  King  who  one  day  will  come  home 
Clothed  with  the  clouds  of  heaven  from  His  Crusade." 

It  is,  perhaps,  by  his  big  achievements  in  the  realm  of 
epic  and  dramatic  poetry  that  Mr.  Noyes  has  won  an 
undisputed  title  to  a  place  in  the  ranks  of  major  poets; 
but  it  is  as  a  lyrist  that  he  is  most  delightful.  In 
poetic  technique,  he  is  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  and 
needless  to  say,  he  has  learned  something  of  worth 
from  every  one  of  the  great  English  singers  who  have 


30      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

gone  before  him.  Especially  valuable  have  been  the 
lessons  which  he  has  learned  from  those  most  subtle  of 
melodists,  Tennyson  and  Swinburne.  The  fruits  of 
Mr.  Noyes's  learning  are  evident:  already  he  has  sur 
passed  in  some  respects  the  two  great  Victorian  word- 
wizards.  Month  after  month  this  wonderful  new 
singer  breaks  forth  into  a  fresh  song  fraught  with 
melody  such  as  England  has  seldom  heard.  Month 
after  month  he  reveals  in  some  new  way  the  musical 
possibilities  of  our  comparatively  unmusical  Anglo- 
Saxon  tongue.  As  Brian  Hooker  well  says:  "The 
fairy  godmothers  at  his  christening  were  very  drunk 
indeed;  but  they  were  rosily  and  gloriously  drunk,  with 
as  yet  no  foreshadowing  of  any  Morning  After. "  I 
have  tried  many  times  to  find  out  the  secret  that  under 
lies  the  marvelous  sweetness  of  Mr.  Noyes's  song, 
but  at  each  attempt  I  have  been  baffled.  Sometimes 
it  seems  to  me  that  his  winsomeness  must  be  due  to 
the  fact  that  his  variety  of  measures  is  almost  as  limit 
less  as  his  poetic  productivity — that,  in  other  words, 
he  rarely  repeats  himself  in  the  use  of  rhythm  and 
rime-scheme.  Sometimes,  too,  I  am  struck  forcibly 
by  the  fact  that  he  has  the  very  rare  faculty,  for  an 
English  poet,  of  handling  the  trochee  and  the  dactyl 
with  quite  as  much  ease  and  grace  as  he  manages  the 
iambus  and  the  anapest.  And  sometimes  I  am  as 
tounded  and  bewildered  at  the  consummate  artistry 
of  his  syllabications,  vowel-harmonies,  feminine  end 
ings,  and  initial-rimes.  But  of  one  thing  I  am  satisfied, 
and  that  is  that  back  of  his  skill  as  a  craftsman  lies  the 
all-important  fact  of  his  spontaneity.  Like  the 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    31 

Elizabethan  lyrists,  he  sings  out  of  pure  delight  in  his 
song,  and  of  the  English  bards  who  have  lived  since 
the  days  of  Gloriana,  he  stands  with  Shelley,  the 
laureate  of  clouds  and  rainbows,  and  with  William 
Blake,  that  captivating  eighteenth-century  madman, 
as  one  of  the  most  spontaneously  joyous  and  joyously 
spontaneous  of  singers.  The  horns  of  elfland  and  the 
harps  of  the  gods  seem  to  accompany  Alfred  Noyes  in 
some  of  his  glorious  paeons,  and  when  he  sings  of  Robin 
Hood,  the  fairy-bells  ring  a  rapturous  obbligato. 

Sherwood  in  the  twilight,  is  Robin  Hood  .awake? 
Grey   and   ghostly   shadows   are  gliding   through   the 

brake; 

Shadows  of  the  dappled  deer,  dreaming  of  the  morn, 
Dreaming  of  a  shadowy  man  that  winds  a  shadowy 

horn. 

Robin  Hood  is  here  again:  all  his  merry  thieves 
Hear  a  ghostly  bugle-note  shivering  through  the  leaves, 
Calling  as  he  used  to  call,  faint  and  far  away, 
In  Sherwood,  in  Sherwood,  about  the  break  of  day. 

Merry,   merry  England   has   kissed   the  lips  of  June: 
All  the  wings  of  fairyland  were  here  beneath  the  moon; 
Like  a  flight  of  rose-leaves  fluttering  in  a  mist 
Of  opal  and  ruby  and  pearl  and  amethyst. 

Merry,  merry  England  is  waking  as  of  old. 

With  eyes  of  blither  hazel  and  hair  of  brighter  gold: 

For  Robin  Hood  is  here  again  beneath  the  bursting 

spray 
In  Sherwood,  in  Sherwood,  about  the  break  of  day. 

I  wish  that  I  had  space  to  quote  all  of  that  magical 
word-symphony,  "The  Barrel-organ",  but  I  shall 
have  to  be  content  with  repeating  three  stanzas  of  it: 


32        PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Go  down   to   Kew  in   lilac-time,  in   lilac-time,  in  lilac- 
time; 
Go   down   to   Kew  in   lilac-time   (it  isn't  far  from 

London !) 
And   you    shall   wander   hand   in   hand   with   love   in 

summer's  wonderland; 

Go  down  to  Kew  in  lilac-time  (it  isn't  far  from  Lon 
don!) 

The  cherry-trees  are  seas  of  bloom  and    soft  perfume 

and  sweet  perfume, 
The  cherry-trees  are  seas  of  bloom  (and  oh,  so  near 

to  London!) 
And  there  they  say,  when  dawn  is  high  and  all  the 

world's  a  blaze  of  sky 

The  cuckoo,  though  he's  very  shy,  will  sing  a  song  for 
London. 

The  Dorian  nightingale  is  rare  and  yet  they  say  you'll 

hear  him  there 
At  Kew,  at  Kew  in  lilac-time  (and  oh,  so  near  to 

London!) 
The  linnet  and  the  throstle  too,  and  after  dark  the  long 

halloo 

And  golden-eyed  tu-whit,  tu-whoo  of  owls  that  ogle 
London. 

Of  Swinburnean  warmth  and  sweetness  is  Mr. 
Noyes's  "Silk  o'  the  Kine",  yet  its  gorgeous  coloring 
is  as  healthy  as  the  coloring  of  Swinburne  is  hectic. 
The  quotation  of  a  single  magnificent  passage,  that  in 
which  is  related  how  Sorch  the  Singer  one  day  espied 
the  beautiful  maiden  Eilidh  bathing  in  the  dazzled 
sea,|Vill  show  well  the  lyrical  quality  of  "Silk  o'  the 
Kine": 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    33 

For  once  in  the  warm  blue  summer  weather 
He  lay  with  his  harp  in  the  deep  sweet  heather, 
And  watched  her  white  limbs  glimmer  and  gleam 
Out,  far  out,  through  the  sea's  eternal  dream, 
Swimming  with  one  bright  arm  like  a  wild  sunbeam 
Flashing  and  cleaving  the  warm  wild  emerald  tide 
That  trembled  and  murmured  and  sobbed  at  her  naked 

side, 

And  folded  and  moulded  her  beauty  in  sun-soft  gold, 
And  swooned  at  her  sweetness,  and  swiftly  revived  into 

cold 

Clear  currents  of  emerald   rapture,   again  and   again 
Scattered  a  glory  of  kisses  around  her  that  broke  into 

rainbows  and  rain, 
As  over  and  under  her  blossoming  breasts  they  rippled 

and  glistened  and  rolled. 

When  one  starts  to  dilate  upon  the  beauties  of  Mr. 
Noyes  as  a  lyrist,  one  is  tempted  to  repeat  pages  and 
pages  of  his  verse.  One  more  quotation,  however,  that 
of  a  sonnet,  must  conclude  this  topic.  Mr.  Noyes 
does  the  sonnet  so  well  that  I  wish  he  would  do  it  more 
frequently.  His  sonnet  "Venus  Disrobing  for  the 
Bath",  which  I  shall  quote,  is  as  finely  wrought  as  a 
piece  of  Grecian  statuary: 


Over  the  firm  young  bosom's  polished  peaks 
The  thin  white  robe  slips  dimly  as  a  dream 
Slowly  dissolving  in  the  sun's  first  beam: 

Far  off  the  sad  sea  sighs  and  vainly  seeks 

The  abandoned  shell  that  bore  her  to  the  Greeks 
When  first  she  slumbered  on  the  sea-blue  stream, 
And  in  the  dawn's  first  faint  wild  golden  gleam 

The  white  doves  woke  her  with  their  soft  red  beaks. 


34      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

From  breast  to  sunny  thigh  the  light  silk  slips 
On  every  rose-white  curve  and  rounded  slope 

Pausing;  and  now  it  lies  around  her  feet 
In  tiny  clouds:  now  timidly  she  dips 

One  foot;  the  warm  wave,  shivering  at  her  sweet. 
Kisses  it  with  a  murmur  of  wild  hope. 

I  have  already  intimated  that  not  only  in  the  manner 
of  his  song,  but  also  in  its  content,  Mr.  Noyes  is  a  poet 
of  broad  range.  He  is  interested  in  such  widely  diverse 
material  as  classical  mythology,  modern  ethics,  the 
Christian  religion,  art,  Continental  poetry,  present- 
day  social  types,  twentieth-century  problems,  Japanese 
lore,  old  English  ballad-legends,  European  history, 
American  scenes,  and,  of  course,  the  experiences  and 
emotions  of  the  individual.  With  equal  freshness  and 
enthusiasm  he  sings  of  a  lost  childhood  and  a  London 
street-scene,  of  a  village  maid  and  a  great  national 
event,  of  an  old  beggar  fiddler  and  Napoleon  Bona 
parte.  Perhaps  the  most  advisable  way  to  treat  the 
subject  of  Mr.  Noyes's  scope  would  be  to  proceed  in  a 
negative  manner  and  make  a  list  of  the  themes  which 
he  does  not  celebrate  in  song,  but  even  the  making  of 
such  a  list  would  have  its  difficulties;  for  experience 
should  teach  us,  if  it  has  not  done  so  already,  that  Mr. 
Noyes  is  a  poet  of  surprises,  and  that  if  we  single  out 
any  one  thing  as  lying  entirely  outside  his  range,  he  is 
pretty  likely  to  do  that  very  thing  in  one  of  next 
month's  magazines.  One  thing  which  we  have  learned 
not  to*  expect  from  him  is  an  interest  in  nature  as  a 
thing  in  itself  or  as  a  great  revelation.  His  imagery 
is  gorgeously  rich,  and  in  two  of  his  biggest  works, 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    35 

"Sherwood"  and  "The  Forest  of  Wild  Thyme", 
background  is  the  all-important  element;  but  he 
certainly  does  not  have  the  Wordsworthian  viewpoint 
toward  nature.  Still,  we  can  make  no  dogmatic 
statement  even  on  this  point;  for  in  "The  Heart  of  the 
Woods",  one  stanza  of  which  I  shall  give,  he  strikes  a 
note  which  is  almost  if  not  quite  transcendental: 

Heart  of  me,  Heart  of  me,  Heart  of  me,  beating,  beating 

afar, 
In  the  green  gloom  of  the  night,  in  the  light  of  the  rosy 

star, 
In  the  cold  sweet  voice  of  the  bird,  in  the  sigh  of  the 

flower-soft  sea, 
Sure  the  Heart  of  the  woods  is  the  Heart  of  the  world 

and  the  Heart  of  Eternity, 
Ay,  and  the  passionate  Heart  it  is  of  you  and  me. 

The  most  serious  charge  which  has  yet  been  brought 
against  Alfred  Noyes  is  that  he  is  a  facile,  clever 
borrower,  who  has  no  new  message,  strikes  no  original 
note.  The  absurdity  of  this  charge  is  proven  by  the 
fact  that  among  the  few  who  make  the  charge  there  is 
the  most  violent  disagreement  as  to  the  fountain-head 
of  Mr.  Noyes's  inspiration.  One  critic  avers  that 
Mr.  Noyes's  fondness  for  refrains  and  alliterations, 
his  delight  in  the  mediaeval,  his  exuberant  melody, 
and  his  frank  treatment  of  sex  passion  and  the  nude, 
stamp  him  at  once  as  nothing  more  or  less  than  a 
belated  Pre-Raphaelite.  A  second  critic  is  equally 
certain  that  whatever  else  Mr.  Noyes  may  be,  he  is  not 
a  Pre-Raphaelite — that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  flawless 


36      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

accuracy  of  his  meters  and  the  smoothness  and  im 
peccable  exactness  of  his  diction,  not  to  mention  his 
intense  British  patriotism,  are  distinctively  Tennyson- 
ian  characteristics.  And  then  a  third  critic  comes 
along  and  gravely  announces  that  Mr.  Noyes,  in  his 
fervid  enthusiasm,  is  a  disciple  of  Shelley  and  of  no 
one  else.  All  of  these  critics  are  right,  and  all  of  them 
are  wrong.  As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  Mr.  Noyes 
has  been  wise  enough  to  follow  the  best  traditions  of 
English  poetry,  and  so  of  course  he  has  found,  in  the 
Pre-Raphaelites,  in  Tennyson,  and  in  Shelley,  many 
things  worthy  of  emulation;  but  the  Pre-Raphaelites' 
blindness  to  anything  but  the  purely  esthetic,  Tenny 
son's  provincial  Englishism,  and  Shelley's  lack  of 
balance  are  three  weaknesses  of  which  Mr.  Noyes  has 
not  been  guilty. 

Alfred  Noyes  is  not  a  poetic  anarchist  like  Walt 
Whitman,  nor  even  a  revolutionist  like  Swinburne  or 
Sidney  Lanier;  but  this  in  no  way  proves  that  he  is 
lacking  in  originality.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  art  is 
as  truly  a  melting-pot  for  the  methods  of  old  poets  as 
the  American  nation  is  a  melting-pot  for  the  natives  of 
old  countries,  and  in  each  case  the  crucible  brings  forth 
a  product  which,  though  wrought  of  old  material,  is 
itself  altogether  new.  But  enough  of  generalities! 
What,  specifically,  has  Mr.  Noyes  done  to  show  that 
he  is  a  leader  as  well  as  a  follower?  Well,  for  one  thing 
— and  for  this  alone  we  should  be  everlastingly  grate 
ful  to  him — he  has  shown  the  spondee  to  have  many 
possibilities  which  no  one  heretofore  dreamed  that  it 
possessed  in  English.  He  has,  moreover,  revived 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    37 

several  splendid  old  measures  which  have  been  lying 
neglected  since  Elizabethan  days,  and  which,  but  for 
his  advent,  would  probably  have  remained  in  obscurity. 
But  consummate  artist  though  he  is,  his  greatest 
originality  does  not  lie  in  his  technique.  The  tremen 
dous  appeal  which  he  has  had  and  is  having  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  must  be  attributed,  in  the  final 
analysis,  to  his  fresh,  big,  healthy  optimism.  In  this 
day,  when  we  are  beginning  to  weary  of  Ibsenism,  and 
Pineroism,  and  Sudermannism,  and  the  other  morbid 
"isms",  Mr.  Noyes's  clear,  courageous  voice  is  indeed 
as  refreshing  as  the  song  of  the  first  robin  in  March. 
His  is  no  sappy,  sentimental  optimism  of  the  sort  that 
drives  strong  minds  to  the  other  extreme;  but  is  a 
sane,  virile  optimism  which  can  give,  in  no  uncertain 
tones,  the  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  within  it.  He 
has  a  message  of  hope  for  our  generation,  and  God 
knows  we  need  it,  God  knows  we  need  a  sight  of  the 
rainbow,  after  the  storm  of  pessimism  which  has 
poured  upon  us  for  the  past  twenty-five  years! 

Alfred  Noyes  now  appears  in  a  most  worthy  role: 
that  of  a  Prophet  of  Universal  Peace.  This  is  a  unique 
as  well  as  a  worthy  role;  for  it  must  be  remembered 
that  nearly  all  the  bards,  ancient  and  modern,  except 
the  Great  Bard  of  nineteen  centuries  ago,  have  found 
the  clang  and  glitter  of  war  one  of  the  most  fascinating 
of  themes.  Peace,  which  Tennyson  timidly  hinted  at 
in  "Locksley  Hall",  Mr.  Noyes  fearlessly  makes  the 
burden  of  his  song.  And  this  new  peace-song,  coming 
as  it  does  when  Briton  and  Teuton,  Gaul  and  Slav, 
writhe  in  the  agony  of  mortal  combat,  is  a  peculiarly 


38      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

welcome  song.  "The  Sceptre  with  the  Dove''  is  the 
name  of  the  ode  which  Mr.  Noyes  wrote  on  the  occasion 
of  King  George  V's  coronation,  and  in  "Forward"  he 
makes  another  strong  plea  for  peace.  Here  are  his 
words: 

Re-union  in  the  truths  that  stand 

When  all  our  wars  are  rolled  away, 
Re-union  of  the  heart  and  hand 

And  of  the  prayers  wherewith  we  pray. 

Re-union  in  the  common  needs, 

The  common  strivings  of  mankind; 
Re-union  of  our  warring  creeds, 

In  the  one  God  that  dwells  behind. 

Then — in  that  day — we  shall  not  meet 

Wrong  with  new  wrong,  but  right  with  right: 

Our  faith  shall  make  your  faith  complete 
When  our  battalions  re-unite. 

Forward! — what  use  of  idle  words? — 

Forward,  O  warriors  of  the  soul! 
There  will  be  breaking  up  of  swords 

When  that  new  morning  makes  us  whole. 

Mr.  Noyes's  peace-plea,  however,  is  no  weakling's 
plea.  He  is,  of  course,  as  firm  as  any  other  English 
man  in  the  conviction  that  the  menace  of  Prussian 
militarism  must  be  wiped  out  at  all  costs.  This 
sentiment  he  has  given  voice  to  in  several  vigorous 
poems  since  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war;  and  in 
"New  Wars  for  Old"  he  clearly  shows  that  the  peace- 
at-any-price  idea  is  one  which  he  abominates.  I 
quote  this  poem  in  full: 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY    39 

Peace?     When  have  we  prayed  for  peace? 

Over  us  burns  a  star 
Bright,  beautiful,  red  for  strife! 
Yours  are  only  the  drum  and  the  fife, 
The  golden  braid  and  the  surface  of  life, 

Ours  is  the  white-hot  war. 

Peace?     When  have  we  prayed  for  peace? 

Ours  are  the  weapons  of  men! 
Time  changes  the  face  of  the  world : 
Your  swords  are  rust  and  your  flags  are  furled; 
And  ours  are  the  unseen  legions  hurled 

Up  to  the  heights  again. 

Peace?     When  have  we  prayed  for  peace? 

Is  there  no  wrong  to  right, 
Wrong  crying  to  God  on  high? 
Here  where  the  weak  and  helpless  die, 
And  the  homeless  hordes  of  the  city  go  by, 

The  ranks  are  rallied  to-night! 

Peace?     When  have  we  prayed  for  peace? 

Are  ye  so  dazed  with  words? 
Earth,  heaven,  shall  pass  away 
Ere  for  your  passionless  peace  we  pray! 
Are  ye  deaf  to  the  trumpets  that  call  us  to-day, 

Blind  to  the  blazing  swords? 

Mr.  Noyes  as  a  prophet  appears  nowhere  to  better 
advantage  than  in  the  stirring  lines  of  "The  Trumpet 
Call": 

I 

Trumpeter,  sound  the  great  recall! 
Swift,  O  swift,  for  the  squadrons  break, 
The  long  lines  waver,  mazed  in  the  gloom! 


40      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Hither  and  thither  the  blind  host  blunders! 
Stand  thou  firm  for  a  dead  Man's  sake, 
Firm  where  the  ranks  reel  down  to  their  doom, 
Stand  thou  firm  in  the  midst  of  the  thunders, 
Stand  where  the  steeds  and  the  riders  fall, 
Set  the  bronze  to  thy  lips  and  sound 
A  rally  to  ring  the  whole  world  round! 
Trumpeter,  rally  us,  rally  us,  rally  us! 
Sound  the  great  recall. 

II 

Trumpeter,  sound  for  the  ancient  heights! 
Clouds  of  the  earth-born  battle  cloak 
The  heaven   that  our  fathers  held  from  of  old; 
And  we — shall  we  prate  to  their  sons  of  the  gain 
In  gold  or  bread?     Through  yonder  smoke 
The  heights  that  never  were  won  with  gold 
Wait,  still  bright  with  their  old  red  stain, 
For  the  thousand  chariots  of  God  again, 
And  the  steel  that  swept  through  a  hundred  fights 
With  the  Ironsides,  equal  to  life  and  death, 
The  steel,  the  steel  of  their  ancient  faith! 
Trumpeter,  rally  us,  rally  us,  rally  us! 
Sound  for  the  sun-lit  heights! 


Trumpeter,  sound  for  the  splendor  of  God! 

Sound  the  music  whose  name  is  law, 

Whose  service  is  perfect  freedom  still, 

The  order  august  that  rules  the  stars! 

Bid  the  anarchs  of  night  withdraw, 

Too  long  the  destroyers  have  worked  their  will, 

Sound  for  the  last,  the  last  of  wars! 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY  41 

Sound  for  the  heights  that  our  fathers  trod, 
When  truth  was  truth  and  love  was  love, 
With  a  hell  beneath,  but  a  heaven  above, 
Trumpeter,  rally  us,  rally  us,  rally  us, 
On  to  the  City  of  God. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  future  of  this  truly  remark 
able  poetic  genius  who  has  lived  but  little  more  than 
half  of  his  allotted  three  score  years  and  ten  ?  Will  he, 
like  Swinburne  and  Matthew  Arnold,  suffer  an  atrophy 
and  presently  cease  to  produce?  Or  will  he,  like  Words 
worth,  continue  to  write,  but  decline  markedly  with 
the  advancing  years?  Or  will  he,  like  Browning  and 
Tennyson,  go  on  growing  and  ripening  to  the  end  of  a 
long  career?  These  are,  of  course,  questions  no  one 
can  answer.  But  this  much  we  may  say  with  certainty: 
were  Alfred  Noyes  to  become  songless  to-morrow  and 
never  utter  another  note,  that  which  he  has  already 
achieved  would  still  be  sufficient  to  give  him,  for  all 
time  to  come,  an  enviable  position  among  English 
poets.  And  we  may  declare,  with  equal  certainty, 
that  Alfred  Noyes,  the  man  of  thirty-six,  sings  with 
quite  as  much  of  the  "first  fine  careless  rapture"  as 
did  Alfred  Noyes,  the  lad  of  twenty-two,  and  with  a 
great  deal  more  skill  and  insight.  And  I  think  we  may 
add,  with  perfect  confidence,  that  as  long  as  Mr.  Noyes 
continues  to  produce,  whether  that  be  for  one  year  or 
for  ten  years  or  for  forty  years,  he  will  be,  as  he  is  now, 
too  conscientious  a  craftsman  ever  to  turn  out  a  crude 
or  slovenly  piece  of  work. 

The  great  danger  which  lies  before  Alfred  Noyes — 
a  danger  against  which,  to  all  appearances,  he  will 


42       PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

have  to  guard  most  earnestly — is  that  in  his  zeal  for 
his  creed,  he  will  forget  that  he  is  a  poet  and  turn 
preacher.  More  than  one  discerning  critic  has  ex 
pressed  grave  apprehension  lest  Mr.  Noyes  should 
cease  to  draw  gruesome  pictures  of  war  and  sin,  and 
spend  his  time  railing  against  them.  Should  these 
apprehensions  prove  to  be  well  grounded,  it  would  be 
deplorable;  but  I  for  one  have  too  great  a  faith  in  Mr. 
Noyes's  acute  artistic  sense,  to  believe  that  he  will 
ever  so  far  forget  the  function  of  the  poet  as  to  fall  into 
the  habit  of  abstract  moralizing. 

I  am  often  fond  of  picturing  in  my  mind  Macaulay's 
hypothetical  traveller  from  New  Zealand.  Just  now 
I  can  see  that  imaginary  gentleman  walking  among 
the  ruins  of  some  London  street,  Piccadilly  perhaps. 
He  walks  briskly,  until  his  attention  is  suddenly 
arrested  by  the  graven  letters,  "Twentieth  Century", 
upon  some  moss-grown  corner-stone.  Then  all  at 
once  his  face  is  aglow.  "Twentieth  century!"  he 
murmurs,  "twentieth  century!  Ah,  yes,  that  was  the 
age  that  produced  that  wonderful  poet,  Alfred  Noyes. 
Like  Prospero  and  Shadow-of-a-leaf,  he  knew  the 
road  to  Fairyland,  the  road  that  leads  through  the 
forest  of  sweet  purple  thyme,  among  the  waving  ferns 
and  the  bluebells  and  the  pale  moonflowers.  And  by 
his  grace,  many  weary  souls,  many  'poor  dark  mortals' 
travelled  that  magic  road  to  its  end,  and  entered  in  at 
the  Ivory  Gates." 

I  have  anticipated  the  storm  of  wrath  which  my 
remarks  must  inevitably  arouse  in  many  conservative 
readers — those  readers  who  are  firm  in  the  conviction 


THE  FOREMOST  POET  OF  OUR  DAY   43 

that  antiquity  has  a  monopoly  upon  great  art,  and  that 
poetic  genius  is  something  which  is  necessarily  far 
removed  from  this  workaday  twentieth  century.  To 
all  such  readers  I  have  only  to  say  that  I  have  no 
apologies  to  make:  I  am  ready  to  take  the  conse 
quences  of  my  rash  enthusiasm.  I  realize  fully  how 
dangerous  a  thing  it  is  to  attempt  to  rate  contemporary 
artistic  genius;  for  I  am  very  well  aware  of  the  fact 
that  art  which  may  be  hailed  by  one  age  with 
unbounded  admiration  may  be  treated  by  a  succeed 
ing  age  with  indifference  or  even  contumely.  But  to  me 
it  is  utterly  unbelievable  that  any  age  endowed  with 
the  love  of  truth,  the  love  of  beauty,  or  the  love  of  love, 
can  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  song  of  Alfred  Noyes. 


WANTED:  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  LITERARY 
CRITICISM 

THE  more  I  view  the  present  state  of  American 
letters,    the    more    I    am    convinced    that    the 
pressing  need  of  our    day  is  not  for    new    and 
greater  creative  geniuses  than  we  have  now,  but  for 
an  entirely  new  spirit  in  literary  criticism. 

The  present  tendency  of  our  critics  of  literature  is 
clearly  to  disparage  rather  than  to  appreciate  our 
contemporary  writers.  And  when  I  speak  of  our 
critics  of  literature,  I  do  not  mean  simply  the  profes 
sionals,  whose  judgments  appear  on  the  printed 
page.  I  mean  quite  as  truly  that  much  larger  and  more 
influential  company  of  critics,  the  average  readers, 
whose  estimates  are  passed  informally  on  the  street, 
in  the  home,  at  the  club. 

The  other  day  a  college  professor  said  to  me:  "I 
don't  think  we  have  any  good  American  poets  at 
present,  do  you?"  I  answered  his  question  with 
another  question:  "Well,  what  do  you  think  of  the 
work  of  such  writers  as  Henry  Van  Dyke,  Edwin 
Arlington  Robinson,  Edith  M.  Thomas,  George 
Sterling,  Josephine  Preston  Peabody,  Percy  Mackaye, 
and  Edwin  Markham?"  And  thereupon  he  confessed 
that  he  knew  practically  nothing  of  these  writers — 
had,  in  fact,  been  so  busy  reading  Lowell  and  Emerson 
and  Walt  Whitman  that  he  had  had  neither  the  time 
nor  the  inclination  to  see  what  our  poets  have  been 
doing  during  the  past  twenty  years  or  so.  And  there 

44 


WANTED:  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  CRITICISM  45 

we  get  at  the  root  of  the  whole  matter.  We  have  been 
so  long  in  the  habit  of  supposing  that  good  literature 
is  bounded  on  the  west  by  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  was 
ended  with  about  the  year  1892,  that  to  voice  a  con 
trary  opinion  is  heresy  of  the  rankest  sort.  How,  we 
ask  ourselves  unconsciously,  can  we  suppose  that  we 
Americans  have  a  real  present-day  literature,  when  we 
are  told  in  the  school  room  and  at  the  reading-circle 
and  from  the  lecture-platform  and  in  almost  every 
magazine  that  we  take  up,  that  all  great  and  glorious 
things  were  written  in  the  past,  or  that  if  anything 
worth  while  is  being  written  now,  it  is  being  done  in 
artistic  old  Europe,  not  in  crude,  provincial,  upstart, 
materialistic  America? 

My  plea,  you  perceive,  is  for  a  critical  spirit  which 
while  rendering  unto  the  great  past  all  due  homage, 
will  not  be  too  fogeyish,  snobbish,  or  ignorant  to  give 
the  present  fair  treatment.  And  my  belief,  as  I  have 
hinted,  is  that  a  true  knowledge  of  the  facts  will  beget 
this  new  spirit. 

To  speak  more  concretely,  suppose  we  begin  our 
campaign  of  self-education  by  looking  over  the  field 
of  realistic  fiction.  This  is  a  good  field  to  begin  with, 
as  no  one  will  deny  its  importance.  Most  of  the 
world's  great  novelists — Thackeray,  George  Eliot, 
Meredith,  Flaubert,  Balzac,  Daudet,  and  Tolstoi,  for 
example — have  been  realists.  And  now  let  us  see  what 
American  writers  belong  in  the  same  category.  William 
Dean  Howells,  Edith  Wharton,  Thomas  Nelson  Page, 
Theodore  Dreiser,  Robert  Herrick,  Mary  E.  Wilkins- 
Freeman,  and  Margaret  Deland  are  a  few  contemporary 


46      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Americans  who  may  be  mentioned,  among  others, 
as  writers  who  deal  not  with  Fairylands  or  Arcadias, 
but  with  various  phases  of  life  as  it  is.  And  where 
shall  we  find  a  similar  group  of  American  writers  in 
any  by-gone  period?  I  cannot  answer  that  question 
except  by  repeating  the  question  itself.  Where  shall 
we  find  a  similar  group?  When  we  have  named  Irving, 
Cooper,  Hawthorne,  Poe,  Simms,  Holmes,  Mrs.  Stowe, 
Mark  Twain,  and  Bret  Harte,  we  have  come  perilously 
near  to  exhausting  our  nineteenth-century  fiction  list. 
And  who  in  that  estimable  company,  except  Haw 
thorne,  Mark  Twain,  and  Harte,  could  be  by  any 
stretch  of  the  imagination  possibly  regarded  as  realistic? 
Or  suppose  we  put  the  matter  in  this  way:  the  future 
historian,  sociologist,  or  anthropologist  who  wishes  to 
inform  himself  as  to  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
early  twentieth  century  can,  by  reading  Mrs.  Wharton, 
learn  much  about  the  gilded  set  in  New  York;  and  a 
perusal  of  some  of  Mrs.  Freeman's  most  characteristic 
work  will  teach  him  a  great  deal  about  the  simpler 
country  folk  of  New  England  and  New  Jersey.  But 
where  shall  we  find  anything  really  illuminating  about 
American  life  as  it  was  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  ?  Assuredly,  not  in  any  mid-nineteenth- 
century  novel  that  you  or  I  can  readily  mention! 

In  a  similar  connection,  a  brief  examination  of  the 
historical  romance  will  not  be  amiss  here.  When 
James  Fenimore  Cooper  wrote  "The  Spy",  he  doubtless 
wrote  the  best  purely  historical  romance  brought  out 
in  the  so-called  "Classical"  period  of  American  litera 
ture;  but  in  any  comparison  of  the  various  Revolu- 


WANTED:  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  CRITICISM  47 

tionary  stories,  no  sane,  fair-minded  reader  would 
think  of  maintaining  that  "The  Spy"  is  equal  to 
Winston  Churchill's  "Richard  Carvel"  or  S.  Weir 
Mitchell's  "Hugh  Wynne",  either  in  historical  accuracy 
or  in  literary  style. 

Now  let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  our  recent  dra 
matic  poetry.  Percy  Mackaye  and  Josephine  Preston 
Peabody  have,  within  the  past  few  years,  written  plays 
which  were  highly  meritorious  from  a  literary  stand 
point  and  eminently  successful  from  a  stage  point  of 
view.  Few,  probably,  will  dispute  the  first  part  of  my 
statement,  and  no  one,  certainly,  will  quarrel  with  the 
second  part.  The  work  of  Mrs.  (Peabody)  Marks  and 
Mr.  Mackaye  belongs,  however,  to  the  present  century. 
What  of  the  nineteenth  century?  Yes;  what,  indeed, 
of  the  nineteenth  century?  I  have  read  plays  by 
Longfellow — very  pretty  plays — but  I  never  saw  or 
knew  of  the  professional  stage  presentation  of  any  of 
them.  I  have,  likewise,  heard  of  the  stage  success  of 
the  blank-verse  dramas  of  John  Howard  Payne;  but 
I  have  never  read  any  of  those  dramas,  and  no  pro 
fessor  of  literature  or  other  wise  counsellor  ever  told 
me  that  it  was  important  that  I  should  read  any  of 
them. 

In  a  paper  of  so  limited  scope  as  this,  I  cannot  at 
tempt  to  discuss  all  forms  of  poetry;  but  for  the  sake 
of  further  illustration,  suppose  we  give  a  brief  con 
sideration  to  nature  poetry,  an  important  form  since 
the  days  of  Thomson.  William  Cullen  Bryant  was, 
of  course,  a  nature  poet  of  high  merit;  but  I  wonder 
whether  the  critics  of  the  future,  the  critics  who  can 


48       PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

view  the  twentieth  century  as  dispassionately  and 
discerningly  as  they  view  the  nineteenth,  will  find  that 
Bryant  was  a  keener  observer  or  a  clearer  interpreter 
of  natural  phenomena  than  the  late  Madison  Cawein. 
Personally  I  very  much  doubt  it. 

Another  poetic  form  which  it  might  be  well  to  men 
tion  is  the  sonnet,  a  form  which  has  been  used  ex 
tensively  by  a  majority  of  great  modern  bards.  Long 
fellow  was  admittedly  the  foremost  of  our  nineteenth- 
century  sonneteers;  but  I  should  like  to  have  any  one 
point  out  to  me  specifically  wherein  his  sonnets  excel  the 
sonnets  of  Lloyd  Mifflin,  Lizette  Woodworth  Reese, 
Louis  Untermeyer,  or  William  Ellery  Leonard. 

And  while  we  are  speaking  of  fiction,  the  drama,  and 
poetry,  we  cannot  omit  mention  of  the  essay  and 
criticism.  Suppose  we  grant  that  as  a  leader  of  thought 
Emerson  has  never  been  surpassed  or  even  equalled 
by  any  later  American  writer.  What  then?  I  have 
yet  to  hear  anybody  assert  that  either  Emerson  or 
Holmes  was  more  readable  or  a  better  stylist  than 
Hamilton  Wright  Mabie,  Henry  Van  Dyke,  Samuel  M. 
Crothers,  or  Walter  Pritchard  Eaton,  or  that  the 
criticisms  of  either  Lowell  or  Poe  were  sounder,  more 
original,  or  more  significant  than  those  of  George  E. 
Woodberry  or  the  late  Thomas  R.  Lounsbury. 

When  we  reduce  the  matter  to  specific  terms  in  this 
fashion,  we  do  not  find  people  much  disposed  to  argue 
with  us.  About  the  strongest  argument  we  are  likely 
to  meet  with  is  something  like  this:  "But  you  are 
comparing  present-day  stuff  with  the  classics  of  our 
literature!  There  were  giants  in  the  old  days,  and  db 


WANTED:  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  CRITICISM  49 

hoc  sequitur,  we  have  nothing  but  pygmies  now."  In 
other  words,  Jubilo  is  greater  than  Jubilum,  and 
hodge  is  superior  to  podge;  because  the  world  has 
always  so  regarded  them! 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  fact  that  this  habit  of  belittling 
the  achievements  of  the  present  and  extolling  those  of 
the  past  is  no  new  thing — that,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
is  based  upon  a  very  old  tradition,  and  that  a  great 
artist  is  seldom  appreciated  as  much  in  his  own  day  as 
by  posterity.  Somewhat  less  than  a  hundred  years 
ago — to  cite  a  specific  case — when  Wordsworth, 
Coleridge,  Shelley,  and  Keats  were  giving  to  the  world 
some  of  their  most  brilliant  songs,  the  critics  of  England 
were  loudly  bewailing  the  fact  that  Pope,  the  incom 
parable  Pope,  was  dead,  and  that  the  golden  age  of 
poesy,  the  age  of  perfect  couplets,  was  passed  away. 
Verily,  a  poet  is  not  without  honor,  save  in  his  own 
generation! 

An  English  station-porter,  when  asked  once  by  an 
American  traveller  why  British  railways  do  not  give 
checks  instead  of  continuing  the  antiquated  and  stupid 
system  of  pasting  labels  upon  luggage,  replied  naively: 
"Well,  sir,  it  never  "as  bean  done."  Obviously,  how 
ever,  the  fact  that  honoring  the  writers  of  one's  own 
day  is  a  thing  which  "never  'as  bean  done"  is  no  reason 
in  the  world  why  we  should  not  be  the  first  generation  to 
break  away  from  a  foolish  prejudice. 

But,  object  many,  if  we  honor  those  whom  we  con 
sider  the  best  writers  of  our  day,  how  can  we  be  sure 
that  posterity  will  accept  our  judgments?  Was  not 
Dryden  once  considered  a  greater  poet  than  Chaucer; 


50      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

and  did  not  Byron,  in  the  opinion  of  his  contemporaries, 
stand  head  and  shoulders  above  Shelley  and  Words 
worth  ? 

Well  and  good!  but  why  should  we  care  what  posterity 
may  think  of  the  geniuses  of  the  early  twentieth 
century?  As  Mr.  G.  H.  Mair,  an  eminent  British 
critic,  has  pointed  out,  why  should  the  possibilities 
that  our  great-grandsons  may  reverse  our  literary 
judgments  of  our  contemporaries  deter  us  from  thinking 
for  ourselves?  To  quote  Mr.  Mair's  words  (English 
Literature:  Modern,  by  G.  H.  Mair,  p.  237):  "No 
notion  is  so  destructive  to  the  formation  of  a  sound 
literary  taste  as  the  notion  that  books  become  literature 
only  when  their  authors  are  dead.  Round  us  men  and 
women  are  putting  into  plays  and  poetry  and  novels 
the  best  they  can  or  know.  They  are  writing  not  for  a 
dim  and  uncertain  future  but  for  us,  and  on  our  recog 
nition  and  welcome  they  depend,  sometimes  for  their 
livelihood,  always  for  the  courage  which  carries  them  on 
to  fresh  endeavor.  Literature  is  an  ever-living  and 
continuous  thing,  and  we  do  it  less  than  its  due  service 
if  we  are  so  occupied  reading  Shakespeare  and  Milton 
and  Scott  that  we  have  no  time  to  read  Mr.  Yeats, 
Mr.  Shaw  or  Mr.  Wells.  Students  of  literature  must 
remember  that  classics  are  being  manufactured  daily 
under  their  eyes,  and  that  on  their  sympathy  and 
comprehension  depends  whether  an  author  receives 
the  success  he  merits  when  he  is  alive  to  enjoy  it. " 

And  this  suggests  the  one  remaining  phase  of  the 
matter  which  presents  itself  to  my  mind  at  this  moment. 
When  we  follow  a  tradition,  be  it  a  good  tradition  or  a 


WANTED:  A  NEW  SPIRIT  IN  CRITICISM  51 

bad  one,  we  seldom  analyze  our  motives,  seldom  ask 
the  why  or  wherefore.  Nevertheless,  I  cannot  help 
wondering  whether  in  our  time-honored  critical  spirit 
there  is  not  a  sub-conscious  voice  which  argues  some 
what  in  this  fashion:  "Our  present-day  writers  may 
have  merit;  but,  bless  you!  if  we  praise  them,  we  shall 
certainly  spoil  them.  To  pat  a  living  author  on  the 
back  is  too  much  like  telling  a  vain  little  girl  that  she 
is  pretty,  or  a  conceited  little  boy  that  he  is  smart." 
And  then  two  pictures  inevitably  appear  to  my  mind 
and  I  see  William  Collins,  one  of  the  few  great  poetic 
geniuses  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  Keats,  high 
priest  in  the  Temple  of  Beauty.  I  see  the  former 
broken-heartedly  burning  poetic  treasures  that  his 
Pope-mad  contemporaries  would  not  read;  and  I  see 
the  latter  wasting  away  to  his  untimely  end,  his  coun 
tenance  the  sad  manifestation  of  a  soul  fraught  with 
heaven  knows  how  many  beautiful  songs  unsung.  And 
thereupon  I  feel  like  exclaiming  passionately  with 
Shelley: 

Most  musical  of  mourners,  weep  anew! 

Not  all  to  that  bright  station  dared  to  climb: 
And  happier  they  their  happiness  who  knew, 

Whose  tapers  yet  burn  through  that  night  of  time 

In  which  suns  perished.     Others  more  sublime, 
Struck  by  the  envious  wrath  of  man  or  god, 

Have  sunk,  extinct  in  their  refulgent  prime; 
And  some  yet  live,  treading  the  thorny  road 
Which  leads,  through  toil  and  hate,  to  Fame's  serene 
abode. 

We  cannot  afford  to    neglect  the    good    poets  and 
novelists,  the  worthy  dramatists  and  essayists,  who  live 


52      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

and  move  and  have  their  being  in  this  twentieth  century 
of  ours.  We  cannot,  moreover,  afford  to  pout  if  as  a 
literary  people  we  do  not  quite  rival  all  the  European 
nations.  We  may  not  have  any  Galsworthy  or  Alfred 
Noyes,  any  Maeterlinck  or  Sudermann;  but  why,  in 
the  name  of  common  sense,  need  that  make  us  de 
spondent?  Why  can  we  not  remember  that  this  is 
no  evidence  of  American  literary  decadence — that  fifty 
years  ago  we  had  no  lyrist  the  peer  of  Browning  or 
Tennyson,  no  philosopher  as  big  or  as  brilliant  as  Car- 
lyle,  no  realistic  novelist  as  great  as  Balzac  or  George 
Eliot?  A  new  critical  spirit!  by  all  that  is  just  and 
reasonable,  a  new  critical  spirit!  We  have  no  cause 
to  be  ashamed  of  our  best  contemporary  American 
writers;  but  if  we  neglect  them,  if  we  fail  to  honor 
them,  we  have  much  cause  to  be  ashamed  of  ourselves. 


THE  RETURN  TO  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY 

POETRY  is  the  most  despised  of  all  the  fine  arts. 
That  fact  is  so  obvious,  so  patent,  that  nobody 
attempts  to  dispute  it.  We  may  view  the  fact 
with  sorrow,  or  we  may  view  it  with  indifference;  but 
at  all  events  we  recognize  it.  In  the  comic  weeklies 
the  poet  is  invariably  an  unkempt,  unshorn,  unbalanced 
creature  who  has  no  business  outside  the  lunatic 
asylum.  "Poetry,"  remarked  a  wag  a  few  years  ago, 
"is  not  a  pursuit:  it's  a  disease."  In  the  slang  par 
lance  of  the  vulgar,  the  poet  is  spoken  of  as  an  individual 
who  "has  bats  in  his  belfry"  or  who  "isn't  all  there." 
In  real~  life  the  poet  may  or  may  not  be  as  thus  de 
picted;  but  at  any  rate  he  is  so  much  a  persona  non 
grata  that  he  is  kept  busy  apologizing  for  his  art  or 
complaining  that  he  is  not  appreciated.  A  prominent 
British  bard  of  our  day  writes  of  "The  Muse  in  Exile", 
and  a  prominent  American  contemporary,  in  a  queru 
lous  sonnet,  finds  "every  other  Art  considered  more 
than  Song's  high  holiness."  Broadly  speaking,  no 
body  loves  a  poet. 

Now  beside  this  fact  stand  two  equally  evident 
facts:  first,  that  the  other  arts  are  not  despised  at  all; 
and  secondly,  that  poetry  was  not  always  thus  held  in 
contempt.  Speaking  about  the  other  arts,  let  us  note 
for  instance  painting,  which  is  loved  by  many  and 
respected  by  all  save  the  vulgar;  or  music,  with  its 
idolized  Carusos  and  Kubeliks;  or  the  novel,  with  its 
tons  and  tons  of  best-sellers;  or  acting,  an  art  whose 

53 


54      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

leading  exponents  are  almost  as  devoutly  worshipped 
as  are  great  military  heroes.  And  speaking  of  the 
world's  change  of  attitude  toward  the  poet,  we  cannot 
well  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  Vergil  and  Shakespeare 
were  among  the  most  prosperous  and  most  respected 
men  of  their  times;  that  Chaucer  and  Dante  held  high 
public  positions;  that  seven  cities  are  said  to  have 
claimed  Homer;  and  that  these  men  were  honored 
because  of  their  art,  not  in  spite  of  it.  In  this  same 
connection,  too,  we  shall  do  well  to  recall  the  tradition 
that  when  Thebes  was  sacked,  once  by  Pausanius  and 
later  by  Alexander  the  Great,  the  house  of  Pindar  the 
poet  was  each  time  spared,  along  with  the  temples  of 
the  gods.  The  world  was  formerly  more  kind  to  its 
bards  than  now. 

Instead  of  complaining,  however,  about  the  present 
situation,  instead  of  repeating  the  trite  and  meaningless 
assertion  that  ours  is  an  age  of  prose,  had  we  not  better 
inquire  into  causes?  If  we  do,  our  inquiries  will  lead 
us  to  easier  deductions  than  we  might  at  first  expect. 
For  instance,  we  may  say  that  music  is  popular  for  the 
very  obvious  reason  that  the  whole  world  loves  harmony 
and  melody  and  rhythm;  that  painting  owes  its  vogue 
to  the  well-nigh  universal  delight  in  color  and  in  a 
pictorial  reproduction  of  life  and  nature;  that  the  wide 
acceptance  of  the  drama  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  fact 
that  men  like  to  mimic  and  to  see  others  mimicked; 
and  that  the  popularity  of  the  novel  and  the  romance  is 
easily  to  be  explained  by  man's  love  for  the  telling  of  a 
tale. 

And  along  with  this  comes  another  easy  deduction: 


RETURN  OF  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY  55 

namely,  that  the  comparatively  few  poets  who  have 
tasted  the  sweets  of  world-wide  applause  have  been 
narrative  poets.  "Why,"  one  might  say,  "the  poets 
whom  you  have  named  as  enjoying  public  esteem — 
Homer  and  Vergil  and  Dante  and  Chaucer  and  Shakes 
peare — were  all  of  them  tellers  of  tales,  and  they  were 
popular  for  the  same  reason  that  Boccaccio  or  Fielding 
or  Dickens  or  any  other  great  story-teller  has  been 
popular.  That  they  used  meter  is  of  small  signifi 
cance."  And  one  might  strengthen  one's  argument 
by  pointing  out  that  Longfellow,  the  most  popular 
American  poet,  is  also  our  greatest  narrative  poet;  and 
that  Tennyson,  the  most  widely  honored  British  poet 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  to  be  thought  of  chiefly  in 
connection  with  such  tales  as  "Idylls  of  the  King", 
"The  Princess",  "Dora",  and  "Enoch  Arden".  How 
easy  and  plausible  such  a  deduction  would  be! — yet, 
unfortunately,  how  superficial  too! 

For  if  we  conclude  the  matter  in  this  way,  we  shall 
have  to  reason  that  lyrical  poetry  must  ever  be  re 
garded  with  contumely,  and  that  the  matter  with 
poetry  now  is  that  the  lyric  has  been  the  form  most 
used  during  the  past  three  hundred  years  or  so.  Such  a 
conclusion,  however,  is  obviously  too  absurd  to  be 
accepted  for  a  moment.  Note  such  poems  as  Pindar's 
Olympic  Odes,  Milton's  "L'Allegro",  Gray's  "Elegy", 
and  Keats's  "Ode  on  A  Grecian  Urn";  and  you  will  at 
once  be  reminded  that  the  lyric  may  have  as  warm  a 
place  in  the  hearts  of  people  as  may  any  other  work  of 
art.  Surely,  then,  it  is  not  because  he  is  a  lyrist  that 
the  modern  poet  is  despised.  Some  other  explanation 
must  be  found. 


56      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

In  this  connection,  has  it  never  occurred  to  us  that 
the  difficulty  is  not  that  poetry  has  been  getting  too 
lyrical,  but  that  until  a  very  recent  date  lyrical  poetry  has 
been  getting  too  subjective?  In  other  words,  if  we 
examine  Victorian  lyrical  verse,  and  Romantic  lyrical 
verse,  as  well  as  a  great  deal  of  Georgian  and  Jacobean 
lyrical  verse,  shall  we  not  find  that  a  wearisomely 
large  amount  of  ego  pervades  it?  "I  celebrate  myself 
and  sing  myself.  I  am  sad  because  my  lover  spurns  me. 
I  wish  I  could  soar  and  sing  as  soars  and  sings  the  sky 
lark.  /  cannot  see  beauty  as  once  I  saw  it — cannot 
enjoy  life  as  once  I  enjoyed  it.  My  heart  leaps  joyously 
at  the  sight  of  a  rainbow,  and  dances  with  the  golden 
daffodils."  That  is  the  tone  of  the  modern  lyrist. 
So  thoroughly,  indeed,  is  this  true  that  lexicographers 
tell  us  the  lyric  is  essentially  the  expression  of  the 
poet's  personal  feelings,  rather  than  of  outward  things. 
And  rhetoricians  enthusiastically  commend  this  sub 
jective  tone.  "If  you  would  be  a  poet,  young  man," 
says  the  professor  of  literature,  "be  subjective,  be 
egoistic.  Talk  constantly  about  yourself;  for  it  is 
human  nature  to  be  more  interested  in  one's  self  than 
in  anybody  or  anything  else,  and  the  subject  in  which 
you  are  most  interested  you  can  make  most  interesting 
to  others.  By  all  means  discuss  those  feelings  and 
experiences  which  are  common  to  the  race,  but  let 
those  feelings  and  experiences  be  your  own  and  be 
treated  from  your  point  of  view." 

The  fallacy,  however,  of  this  sort  of  preachment  and 
practice  is  this:  if  it  is  human  nature  to  be  primarily 
interested  in  self,  it  is  likewise  human  nature  to  be 


RETURN  OF  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY  57 

insufferably  bored  by  egoism  in  others.  Let  us,  for  a 
moment,  apply  this  principle  to  the  other  arts. 
Imagine  a  painter  who  executed  nothing  but  portraits 
of  himself!  Imagine  a  romance  or  a  drama  or  an 
opera  in  which  the  author  himself  appeared  as  a  lone 
character!  I  fancy  that  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  alone 
would  be  quite  as  unsatisfactory  as  Hamlet  with 
Hamlet  left  out. 

Now  notice  some  of  the  great  lyrics,  some  of  the 
lyrics  which  approach  universality  in  their  appeal. 
Take,  for  example,  Pindar's  Olympic  Odes,  which  deal 
with  the  \ictors  in  some  of  the  great  games.  Take 
Milton's  "L'Allegro",  which  has  to  do  with  milkmaids 
and  mowers  and  shepherds,  with  nibbling  flocks  and 
meadows  and  brooks,  with  hamlets  and  country 
dances  and  feasting.  Take  Gray's  "Elegy",  wherein 
are  recounted  the  simple  annals  of  the  poor  and  the 
oblivion  that  is  the  lot  of  the  obscure  dead.  Take 
Keats's  "Ode  on  A  Grecian  Urn",  wherein  we  read  of 
Arcadian  dales,  of  the  wild  ecstasy  of  pursuing  men  and 
fleeing  maidens,  of  soft  pipes  and  happy  melodists. 
And  notice,  in  short,  that  in  each  and  all  of  these 
lyrics  the  poet  is  so  engrossed  in  outside  things  that  he 
says  little  or  nothing  about  himself. 

May  we  not,  then,  reasonably  assume  that  the 
popularity  of  such  singers  as  Homer  and  Chaucer  and 
Shakespeare  was  due  only  in  part  to  the  fact  that  they 
were  story-tellers?  May  we  not  assume  that  one  of 
the  greatest  reasons  for  their  wide  vogue  has  been 
that  they  dealt  not  with  their  little  private  joys  and 
sorrows,  but  with  outside  things,  with  human  activities, 


58      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

with  those  subjects  which  interest  men  in  general? 
Pause  for  a  moment  to  think  of  Homer's  immortal 
"Iliad",  and  I  believe  you  will  readily  concede  that 
the  personal  characteristics  of  Achilles  and  Hector 
and  Priam,  their  virtues  and  their  foibles,  are  almost 
as  significant  as  their  adventures.  Think  of  Chaucer's 
delightful  "Canterbury  Tales",  and  I  daresay  you  will 
be  impressed  quite  as  vividly  with  the  appearance  and 
general  behavior  of  the  nun's  priest  and  the  miller  and 
the  pardoner  as  with  the  tales  that  they  have  to  tell. 
Ponder  on  some  of  Shakespeare's  wonderful  dramas, 
and  I  feel  sure  that  such  personalities  as  Shylock  and 
FalstafT  and  Lady  Macbeth  will  stand  out  in  your 
mind  more  clearly  than  will  any  of  the  great  master's 
plots.  A  poet  does  not  have  to  be  a  story-teller  in 
order  to  touch  those  chords  which  will  awaken  humanity 
to  a  glad  response.  The  sooner  we  realize  that,  the 
better.  The  sooner,  too,  that  the  bard  realizes  that 
lyrical  poetry  does  not  have  to  be  subjective  and 
egoistic,  the  better  for  him.  The  all-important  thing 
is  that  the  literary  artist,  like  the  painter  and  the 
Thespian,  shall  be  concerned  with  significant  objects 
and  experiences,  with  those  objects  and  experiences 
that  we,  racially,  perceive  and  sense  day  by  day. 

One  of  the  most  encouraging  signs  of  the  times  is 
that  our  younger  lyrical  poets  are  coming  to  a  realiza 
tion  of  this.  They  are  awakening  to  the  fact  that 
man's  love  of  rhythm  and  beauty  should  give  lyrical 
poetry  a  standing  with  the  other  arts,  and  that  if 
lyrical  poetry  falls  short  of  such  standing,  the  fault  is 
not  intrinsic,  but  is  due  to  some  cause  susceptible  of 


RETURN  OF  ABJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY  59 

remedy.  And  they  are,  I  believe,  discovering  that 
this  remedy  lies  in  objectivism.  Look  over  a  repre 
sentative  list  of  nineteenth-century  lyrics,  and  what 
do  you  find?  You  find  such  titles  as  "Come  Not 
When  I  am  Dead,"  "My  Star",  "Were  You  With  Me", 
"My  Hopes  Retire,"  "I  Wandered  Lonely  as  A  Cloud", 
"When  I  Have  Fears  that  I  May  Cease  to  Be",  and 
"Do  You  Remember  Me?  Or  are  You  Proud".  If, 
on  the  contrary,  you  examine  a  few  present-day  lyrics, 
you  are  more  likely  to  meet  with  such  titles  as  "  Lyn- 
chers",  "The  Lights  of  New  York",  "The  Parade", 
"Midnight  Down  Town",  "Shop-Girls",  "Street- 
Cleaners",  "Sunday  in  the  Park",  "The  Theatre- 
Hour",  and  "The  Italian  Restaurant".  All  of  which 
indicates,  I  'think,  that  our  lyrists  are  becoming  less 
self-centered — are  beginning  to  vie  with  the  genre- 
painters  in  their  interest  in  the  scenes  and  activities 
round  about  them.  Here  is  a  typical  objective  lyric 
of  the  new  order,  a  poem  by  John  Hall  Wheelock: 

The  soft,  gray  garment  of  the  rushing  rain 
Veils  in  the  lonely  Sunday  streets  afar, 
The  passengers  sit  dumb  within  the  car — 

Slow  drops  drip  wearily  down  the  window-pane. 

A  funeral  procession  takes  its  way 

Across  the  tracks,  the  car  stands  still  a  space, 
All  eyes  are  turned  and  every  anxious  face, — 

Save  one,  that  laughs  oblivious  of  delay; 

Holding  her  baby  close  against  her  breast, 
The  heart  of  love,  too  glad  to  comprehend, 
And  Life  at  War  with  Death  until  the  end 

The  mother  throned  serene  amid  the  rest. 


60        PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

And  here  are  "City  Vignettes",  some  equally  objective 
stanzas  from  the  pen  of  Sara  Teasdale: 

I 
DAWN 

The  greenish  sky  glows  up  in  misty  reds, 

The  purple  shadows  turn  to  brick  and  stone, 

The   dreams   wear   thin,   men   turn   upon   their   beds, 
And  hear  the  milk-cart  jangle  by  alone. 

II 
DUSK 

The  city's  street  a  roaring  blackened  stream 

Walled   in   by  granite,   thro'   whose   thousand   eyes 

A  thousand  yellow  lights  begin  to  gleam, 
And  over  all  the  pale  untroubled  skies. 

Ill 
RAIN  AND  NIGHT 

The  street-lamps  shine  in  a  yellow  line 

Down  the  splashy,  gleaming  street, 
And  the  rain  is  heard  now  loud  now  blurred 

By  the  tread  of  homing  feet. 

Notice  that  these  tremendously  effective  lyrics  are 
entirely  objective — that  the  pronouns  /,  me,  and  my 
do  not  once  occur  in  either  of  them.  Here  the  poet 
forgets  himself  and  his  own  little  joys  and  sorrows  to 
depict  something  of  universal  interest. 


RETURN  OF  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY       61 

That  this  new  objective  note  in  poetry  has  been 
inevitable,  it  may  well  be  contended.  For  it  may  be 
reasonably  argued  that  the  increasing  relative  impor 
tance  of  the  city  as  a  factor  in  our  modern  civilization 
means  perforce  that  the  city  will  find  a  greater  and 
greater  place  in  literature,  poetry  as  well  as  prose;  and 
that  when  a  writer  turns  his  attention  to  the  strenuous 
and  widely  diverse  activities  of  a  great  metropolis, 
he  can  scarcely  escape  being  objective.  But,  after  all, 
that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  The  all-important  fact 
is  that  a  change  of  attitude  has  come  about. 

And  what  have  been  the  results  of  this  change? 
Is  the  poetic  art  actually  gaining,  from  a  public  stand 
point,  in  respectability:  Or  am  I  merely  theorizing? 
Let  us  see.  Within  the  past  four  years  three  magazines 
devoted  exclusively  to  verse  and  verse-criticism  have 
been  started  in  this  country; — and  all  three  of  them 
appear  to  be  prospering!  Another  apparently  success 
ful  venture  of  rather  recent  origin  is  the  poetic  prize 
contest  which  is  annually  conducted  under  the  auspices 
of  a  leading  publisher.  And  if  one  will  take  the  trouble 
to  examine  a  few  representative  college  and  university 
bulletins,  one  will  find  that  our  institutions  of  learning 
show  an  increasing  disposition  to  introduce  the  study 
of  contemporary  poetry  into  their  curricula.  So  it  will 
be  observed  that  the  art  of  prosody  is  more  than  holding 
its  own  in  this  twentieth  century  of  ours. 

And  who  are  the  present-day  singers  who  are  popular 
in  the  best  sense  of  the  word?  Who  are  the  bards 
most  widely  esteemed  by  cultured,  discriminating 
readers?  Well,  there  are  Mr.  Wheelock  and  Miss 


62      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Teasdale,  whom  I  have  already  quoted.  There  is 
Joyce  Kilmer,  whose  treatment  of  various  familiar, 
everyday  themes,  is  notably  objective.  There  is 
Louis  Untermeyer,  who  was  certainly  rather  subjective 
in  his  youthful  "First  Love",  but  whose  maturing 
art — particularly  in  such  pieces  as  "The  City" — shows 
an  increasing  tendency  to  deal  with  those  things  which 
lie  outside  the  ego.  There  is  Vachel  Lindsay,  whose 
enthusiasm  for  such  things  as  the  esthetic  development 
of  villages  will  not  permit  him  to  think  much  about 
himself.  And  there  is  James  Oppenheim,  who  is  so 
much  interested  in  East  Side  types  in  the  great  metrop 
olis,  that  he  has  scant  time  to  celebrate  himself  or 
sing  himself. 

But  let  us  take  a  more  shining  example.  Of  all  the 
living  poets  who  use  our  language  as  a  medium  of 
expression  the  most  popular  with  cultivated  readers  is 
probably  Alfred  Noyes.  And  to  what  does  he  owe 
his  popularity?  To  narrative  poetry?  Well,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  with  "Drake"  and  "Tales  of  the  Mer 
maid  Tavern",  to  say  nothing  of  his  play  "Sherwood" 
and  some  of  his  minor  narrative  poems,  he  has  gained 
notable  distinction  as  a  story-teller.  But  if  a  vote 
were  taken  to  decide  what  is  the  most  appealing,  most 
gripping,  most  human  poem  Mr.  Noyes  has  yet  written, 
I  doubt  not  that  the  verdict  would  be  overwhelmingly 
in  favor  of  that  remarkable  lyric,  "The  Barrel-Organ". 

And  what  have  we  in  "The  Barrel-Organ"?  Not 
a  poet's  solitary  exultation  at  the  return  of  spring; 
not  a  sensitive  lover's  whining  lament  that  he  has  been 
rejected;  not  a  self-occupied  soul's  wonder  whether  his 


RETURN  OF  OBJECTIVISM  IN  POETRY    63 

individual  consciousness  is  to  be  eternal:  but  a  London 
street,  teeming  with  life!  A  barrel-organ  plays  airs 
from  the  operas  of  Verdi,  and  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  hear.  The  music  changes  and  ranges  like  a 
prismatic  glass,  and  as  it  passes  from  mood  to  mood, 
the  great  multitudes — thieves  and  clerks  and  butchers, 
portly  business  men  and  athletic  college  youths, 
modish  society  women  and  haggard  "demi-reps" — are 
transported  to  that  beautiful  land  where  the  dead 
dreams  go. 

No  wonder  such  a  poem,  effectively  written, 
approaches  universality  in  its  appeal!  For  here  it  is 
not  the  man-soul,  but  the  world-soul,  that  speaks. 
And  when  the  world-soul  speaks,  whether  it  speak  in 
terms  of  a  London  crowd  or  in  terms  of  inanimate 
meadow  and  grove  and  stream,  the  world  responds. 
This  is  the  new  poetic  viewpoint.  This  is  the  return 
to  that  objectivism  which  glorified  the  work  of  Homer 
and  Chaucer  and  the  other  old  masters.  This  is  the 
movement  which  should  redeem  the  divine  art  of  poesy 
from  the  ill-favor  into  which  it  has  fallen  during 
recent  centuries.  Let  the  gifted  singer  of  the  rising 
generation  learn  this.  Let  him  learn  that  his  art  is 
inherently  noble,  and  need  not  be  despised.  Let  him 
learn  that  by  fleeing  the  murky  prison-house  of  self- 
consciousness,  he  can  stand,  with  his  fellow-artists, 
in  the  bright  sunshine  of  renown. 


THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE 

ONE  hears  much  about  the  new  feminist  move 
ment  these  days.  Indeed,  it  is  a  topic  so 
widely  discussed  that  the  writer  who  essays 
it  runs  the  risk  of  being  wearisomely  trite.  It  is  a  far 
cry  from  the  ancient  to  the  modern,  and  in  some  respects 
it  is  almost  as  far  a  cry  from  the  dawn  of  modern  times 
to  these  later  days.  The  hairy  cave-man  cudgeling 
his  chosen  mate  into  a  receptive  attitude;  the  genteel 
Elizabethan  baronet  flogging  his  grown  daughter;  the 
eighteenth-century  vicar  dilating  upon  the  evils  of 
giving  "decently  bred  young  females"  too  much  book- 
learning — what  a  contrast  are  these  to  present-day 
mere  man,  who  in  gracious  eagerness  or  in  sullen 
obedience,  bows  lower  and  lower  to  the  eternal  feminine! 
Verily,  in  this  era  of  bachelor  girls,  lady  doctors  of 
philosophy  and  medicine,  suffragists,  and  militant  and 
non-militant  suffragettes,  feminism  is  a  much  alive 
movement. 

Yet  one  of  the  most  striking  phases  of  the  new 
movement  has  been  allowed  to  pass  almost  unnoticed: 
namely,  the  increasing  activity  of  women  as  producers 
of  "real  literature.  The  terms  "ancient  bard"  and 
"ancient  historian"  are  almost  as  suggestive  of  mas 
culinity  as  "blacksmith"  and  "hod-carrier"  and 
"bricklayer".  Sappho  was  a  great  genius,  but  she  was 
a  lonely  figure  beside  Homer  and  Theocritus  and 
Pindar,  Vergil  and  Horace  and  Ovid,  and  the  other 
male  singers  of  olden  times.  One  must  go  to  very 

64 


THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE  65 

modern  history  to  find  record  of  many  literary  women. 
A  comparison  of  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  century 
English  literature  affords  an  amazing  contrast,  showing 
how  few  of  the  eminent  British  women  of  letters 
flourished  prior  to  about  1800.  Compare,  for  example, 
the  mediocre  Fanny  Burney  or  Hester  Thrale  Piozzi 
with  Mrs.  Browning,  who  was,  with  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti,  one  of  the  two  foremost  English  sonneteers 
of  the  Victorian  Era.  Compare  Miss  Burney  or  Mrs. 
Piozzi  with  Rossetti's  gifted  sister  Christina;  or  with 
Jane  Austen,  supreme  realist  of  the  Romantic  Period; 
or  with  Mrs.  Gaskell,  author  of  the  inimitable  "  Cran- 
ford";  or  with  Charlotte  Bronte,  creator  of  the  im 
mortal  "Jane  Eyre",  or  with  George  Eliot,  perhaps 
the  greatest  British  novelist  of  all  time. 

Even  sharper,  in  this  respect,  is  the  contrast  between 
nineteenth  and  twentieth  century  American  writers. 
To  give  a  comprehensive  list  of  the  leading  literary 
figures  of  what  we  may  call  our  "Golden  Age",  we 
must,  of  course,  include  such  names  as  Irving,  Cooper, 
Bryant,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Poe,  Holmes, 
Motley,  Prescott,  Thoreau,  Whitman,  Lowell,  Parkman, 
Curtis,  Taylor,  Aldrich,  Stedman,  Timrod,  Hayne, 
Lanier,  Harte,  and  Clemens.  But  where  may  we  find 
a  feminine  name  worthy  of  mention  in  that  extensive 
list?  True,  there  were  women  writers  in  the  days  of 
our  fathers  and  grandfathers.  There  was  Margaret 
Fuller,  who  was  certainly  a  great  thinker,  but  in  no 
sense  a  great  writer.  There  was  Louisa  M.  Alcott, 
whose  juvenile  stories  are  thoroughly  respectable  and 
altogether  charming,  but  fall  far  short  of  being  dis- 


66      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

tinctive  in  style,  big  in  purpose,  or  significant  in  content. 
There  was  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  author  of  a  phe 
nomenal  best-seller  which,  everybody  now  admits,  has 
been  ridiculously  overrated.  There  were  Lydia 
Sigourney,  Lucy  Larcom,  and  the  Gary  sisters,  esti 
mable  ladies  who  by  their  pretty  inanity  and  innocuous 
platitudes  rimed  their  way  into  the  hearts  of  thousands 
of  very  nice  people.  There  were  Mary  J.  Holmes, 
Mrs.  E.  D.  E.  N.  Southworth,  and  Augusta  J.  Evans 
Wilson,  perpetrators  of  some  of  the  most  consummate 
balderdash  that  ever  found  its  way  into  cloth  bindings. 
And  so  one  might  continue  the  comparison,  did  it  not 
become  so  pitiably  absurd. 

The  story  of  our  twentieth-century  literature,  how 
ever,  is  a  very  different  tale.  Try  to  name  a  few  of  our 
best  present-day  writers.  If  you  turn  your  attention 
to  the  field  of  bourgeois  local-color  realism,  you  cannot 
escape  the  names  of  Alice  Brown,  Mary  E.  Wilkins- 
Freeman,  Mary  S.  Watts,  Dorothy  Canfield,  and  Kate 
Douglas  Wiggin.  If  you  think  of  interpreters  of  the 
life  of  metropolitan  plutocracy  and  fashion,  you  will 
certainly  mention  Edith  Wharton  first  of  all.  If  you 
ponder  upon  creators  of  unforgettable  characters  and 
backgrounds,  you  will  inevitably  call  to  mind  Margaret 
Deland,  to  whom  we  are  so  deeply  indebted  for  Dr. 
Lavendar  and  Old  Chester.  If  you  look  southward, 
you  will  assuredly  note  Mary  Johnston  and  Ellen 
Glasgow.  If  your  chief  interest  is  in  the  American 
essay,  Agnes  Repplier  is  bound  to  claim  much  of  your 
attention.  And  if  you  would  record  the  names  of  our 
best  living  poets,  you  must,  beyond  the  shadow  of  a 


THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE  67 

doubt,  mention  Edith  M.  Thomas,  Lizette  Woodworth 
Reese,  Florence  Earle  Coates,  Fannie  Stearns  Davis, 
Sarah  N.  Cleghorn,  Anna  Hempstead  Branch,  and 
Sara  Teasdale  in  lyrical  verse,  and  Josephine  Preston 
Peabody  in  the  poetic  drama.  So  runs  the  list,  until 
one  is  tempted  to  throw  up  one's  hands  in  dismay  and 
exclaim,  "Where  are  the  men  of  yesteryear?"  Of 
course  we  have  our  men  writers  nowadays  too — some 
highly  meritorious  ones — but  neither  you  nor  I 
should  be  eager  to  assume  the  task  of  presenting  a  male 
list  more  impressive  than  the  list  which  I  .have  just 
finished.  Particularly  in  the  realm  of  fiction  would 
such  a  task  be  difficult.  Apropos  of  this,  I  recently 
made  an  interesting  discovery.  I  went  through  files 
of  one  of  our  three  leading  illustrated  magazines,  a 
periodical  which  sells  for  thirty-five  cents  a  copy.  I 
compared  an  1885  volume  with  a  volume  for  1910. 
In  the  former,  I  found,  only  eight  per  cent  of  the  fiction 
and  thirty-three  per  cent  of  the  verse  was  from  the 
pens  of  women.  In  the  latter,  I  noted,  fifty-four  per 
cent  of  the  fiction  and  approximately  the  same  per 
centage  of  the  verse  was  furnished  by  women  writers. 
Similar  investigations  of  other  standard  magazines 
showed  the  above  figures  to  be  thoroughly  representa 
tive.  And  this  new  trend  is  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  literature  of  our  own  country.  Witness  the  success 
of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  Mrs.  Alice  Meynell,  and 
May  Sinclair  in  England;  Emilia  Pardo-Bazan  in 
Spain;  Ada  Negri  and  Matilda  Serao  in  Italy;  Madame 
de  Martel  ("Gyp")  in  France;  Gertrude  Bosboom- 
Toussaint  and  Adele  Opzoomer  in  Holland;  Clara 


68      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

Viebig,  Gabriele  Reuter,  and  Ricarda  Huch  in 
Germany;  Baroness  von  Suttner  in  Austria;  Amalie 
Skram  in  Norway;  Alfhild  Agrell,  Matilda  Mailing, 
Selma  Lagerloef,  and  Ellen  Key  in  Sweden;  Isabella 
Kaiser  and  Adele  Huguenin  in  Switzerland;  and 
Carmen  Sylva  in  Roumania. 

The  causes  of  this  tremendous  growth  of  feminism 
in  literature,  it  is  altogether  unnecessary  to  discuss 
here.  We  must  leave  such  matters  to  sociologists  and 
psychologists.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  certain  important 
economic  changes,  such  as  the  invention  of  machinery 
and  the  general  modern  tendency  toward  urbanization, 
which  have  taken  woman  out  of  the  seclusion  of  the 
home  into  business,  higher  education,  the  professions, 
and  politics,  have  likewise  given  her  a  footing  in  the 
world  of  letters.  So  in  general  we  may  say  that  women 
are  becoming  writers  for  the  same  reason  that  they 
are  becoming  clerks,  stenographers,  sanitary  police 
men,  lawyers,  legislators,  college  professors,  or  clergy 
men.  But,  you  may  say,  feminism  is  gaining  much 
more  ground  in  literature  than  in  certain  other  fields — 
science,  for  instance.  Unquestionably!  But  let  us 
consider  that  matter  a  little  later. 

Meanwhile  we  may  very  well  speculate  as  to  the 
possible  results  of  this  new  movement.  Absurd  as  it 
may  seem,  one  is  sometimes  prone,  in  view  of  present 
tendencies,  to  dream  of  the  time  when  the  male  writer 
will  be  as  thoroughly  obsolete  as  the.  Inquisition, 
mediaeval  armor,  the  sedan-chair,  or  the  powdered 
wig.  Indeed,  if  one  has  a  fairly  active  imagination, 
one  may  fancy  the  schoolmistress  of  the  twenty-fifth 


THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE  69 

century  saying  to  her  pupils:  "  Yes,  Arnold  Bennett  and 
William  Watson  were  their  real  names.  Back  in  the 
twentieth  century,  you  see,  men  wrote  some  of  the 
novels  and  poetry;  and  only  a  couple  of  centuries 
earlier,  nearly  all  literature  was  produced  by  men." 

Jesting  aside,  however,  what  will  be  the  result  if 
feminism  continues  to  assume  a  greater  and  greater 
relative  importance  in  our  literature?  Will  it  be 
merely  an  interesting  phenomenon,  with  no  more 
practical  bearing  upon  life  than  the  shape  of  a  fern  or 
the  color  of  a  robin's  egg;  or  will  it  change  radically 
the  character  of  our  poetry  and  our  fiction,  our  essays 
and  our  other  works  of  literature?  The  answer  to  this 
question  must,  I  think,  be  largely  psychological;  and 
here  we  may  revert  to  the  query:  Why  is  feminism 
gaining  more  ground  in  literature  than  in  certain  other 
fields? 

In  some  lines  of  activity,  feminism  has  never  taken  a 
firm  hold  and  never  will  take  a  firm  hold.  For  very 
good  physical  reasons,  women  will  never  make  up  the 
rank  and  file  of  our  armies,  man  our  battleships,  com 
pose  our  league  baseball  teams,  or  fight  our  prize 
fights.  And  for  equally  good,  if  less  obvious,  psycho 
logical  reasons,  women  are  unlikely  to  supersede  men 
as  bankers  and  merchants  and  civil  engineers,  or  even 
as  butchers  and  bakers  and  candlestick-makers.  That 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  sex  temperament  is  a  proposi 
tion  which  has  long  ago  passed  from  the  theoretical 
to  the  axiomatic  stage.  As  Professor  George  Trumbull 
Ladd  remarks  (Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explana 
tory,  p.  653):  "The  sexual  differences,  on  the  psycho- 


70      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

logical  side,  are  as  minute,  pervasive,  and  influential 
as  on  the  anatomical  and  physiological  side."  And  as 
Professor  Edward  Alsworth  Ross  has  pointed  out 
(Social  Psychology,  p.  17),  women  are  more  suggestible 
and  more  emotional  than  men.  Is  not  this  but  another 
way  of  saying  that  women  are  more  graphic,  less  logical; 
more  concrete,  less  abstract;  more  sympathetic,  less 
businesslike;  more  artistic,  less  scientific,  than  men? 
To  quote  Professor  Ladd  once  more  (p.  651):  "There 
may  be  said  to  be  a  distinctively  poetic,  or — to  use 
Lotze's  word — 'sentimental'  temperament.  The  sen 
timental  temperament  is  characteristically  more 
feminine  than  masculine."  Now  it  requires  com 
paratively  little  imagination,  and  practically  no 
sentiment  or  emotion,  to  build  a  bridge  or  to  determine 
the  area  of  an  oblate  spheroid;  but  it  requires  an 
abundance  of  all  of  these  qualities  to  paint  a  picture 
or  to  write  a  poem.  But  what  of  this?  Well,  the  fact 
that  in  our  co-educational  colleges  and  universities  an 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  students  in  science  are 
males  and  a  clear  majority  of  the  students  in  English 
literature  are  females  depends,  I  believe,  upon  some 
thing  far  more  fundamental  than  an  accident  imposed 
by  tradition.  To  the  end  of  time  the  average  young 
man  will  be  more  interested  in  logarithms  than  in 
prosody,  and  the  average  young  woman  will  be  more 
inspired  by  Shelley  or  Tennyson  than  by  calculus  or 
chemistry. 

And  what  does  this  presage?  To  prophesy  or  even 
dream  of  the  ultimate  extinction  of  the  genus  scriptor 
masculinus  would  be,  as  I  have  already  indicated, 


THE  NEW  FEMINISM  IN  LITERATURE     71 

exceedingly  rash.  Yet  certain  clear  signs  point  to 
the  possible  advent  of  an  era  when  literature  will  be 
considered  as  peculiarly  a  woman's  function  as  darning 
stockings,  working  embroidery,  or  making  chocolate 
fudge.  That  Homer,  Vergil,  Dante,  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Goethe,  Balzac,  and  nearly  all  the  other  great 
writers  of  the  past  were  men  proves  nothing.  It 
simply  means  that  literature  had  to  be  produced,  and 
that  inasmuch  as  neither  tradition  nor  training  fitted 
women  for  literary  pursuits,  the  men  had  to  do  the 
producing.  Whatever  one  may  think  of  the  outcome 
of  the  new  feminist  movement  in  our  literature,  there 
is  certainly  nothing  to  warrant  the  assertion  that  the 
greatness  of  Homer  and  the  rest  of  the  geniuses  I  have 
mentioned  was  due  to  their  sex.  They  may  all  of  them 
have  been  great  scientists  or  soldiers  or  merchant 
princes  gone  wrong.  Wonderful  as  are  "The  Iliad", 
"Hamlet",  "Paradise  Lost",  and  "Faust",  no  one 
will  maintain  that  they  are  the  greatest  writings  which 
it  is  possible  for  human  beings  to  produce.  Perhaps 
the  most  characteristic  of  all  poems  or  romances  is  yet 
to  have  its  birth — in  the  brain  of  some  inspired  woman. 
And  if  it  so  be,  it  is  well.  For  nobly  as  men  have 
wrought  with  the  pen,  they  have,  after  all,  been  sorry 
bunglers.  Fancy,  for  a  moment,  the  young  married 
man  who  is  left  at  home  alone  for  a  few  days,  his  wife 
and  maid-servant  having  gone  away  on  a  short  vaca 
tion.  He  gropes  about  from  pantry  to  cellar,  and  from 
cupboard  to  china-closet,  in  a  half  dazed,  altogether 
confused  manner.  His  wife  has  told  him  where  to 
find  things,  but  he  remembers  the  location  of  scarcely 


72      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

a  single  article.  He  tries  clumsily,  by  turns,  to  make 
his  bed,  cook  something  edible  for  lunch,  and  set  the 
table.  He  is  a  half  humorous,  half  pathetic  figure. 
But  he  is  neither  more  humorous  nor  more  pathetic 
than  a  Dickens  trying  to  be  as  emotional  as  a  woman, 
or  a  Cooper  trying  to  interpret  woman-nature.  The 
feminist  movement  in  literature  is  still  very  young,  but 
its  peculiarly  strong  significance  is  becoming  more  and 
more  evident.  Even  now,  whenever  we  wish  to  prove 
that  a  realist  does  not  have  to  be  a  pessimist,  we  cite 
a  woman,  George  Eliot,  as  the  supreme  evidence. 
And  it  required  a  woman,  Josephine  Preston  Peabody, 
to  demonstrate  that  an  American  play  can  be  truly 
literary  and  actable  at  the  same  time.  Why,  then,  may 
we  not  confidently  declare  that  the  great  hope  for 
literature  in  the  future  lies  in  feminism?  Perhaps  we 
are  yet  to  see  the  advent  of  a  supreme  woman  literary 
genius,  a  genius  more  remarkable  than  the  world  has 
yet  known,  a  genius  having  the  emotional  warmth  and 
tender  sympathies  of  a  Dickens,  without  his  bathos; 
the  microscopically  accurate  insight  of  a  Thomas  Hardy, 
without  his  gloom  or  cynicism;  the  fervid  passion  of  a 
Swinburne,  without  his  Pagan  sensuality;  the  com 
prehensive  human  breadth  of  a  Shakespeare,  with 
some  additional  merits  all  her  own.  Who  shall  assert 
that  the  new  feminist  movement  in  literature  is  merely 
a  phase  of  the  general  emancipation  of  woman  from  her 
ancient  bondage,  meaning  everything  to  woman  and 
nothing  to  literature?  Who  shall  say  that  it  is  not 
infinitely  more:  the  emancipation  of  literature  from  the 
crudeness  of  masculinity? 


MADISON    CAWEIN 

THE  old  adage  about  the  prophet  without  honor 
in  his  own  country  seldom  applies  in  the  South. 
In  general,  that  section  of  our  country  acclaims 
her  literary  men,  as  well  as  her  other  celebrities,  with 
peculiar  loyalty,  peculiar  pride.  It  was  scarcely  four 
years  ago,  if  memory  errs  not,  that  Southern  critics 
from  Baltimore  to  El  Paso,  from  Dallas  to  Jacksonville, 
were  chiding  Professor  Brander  Matthews  for  his 
shameful  damning-with-faint-praise  of  writers  born 
south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  Line.  Yet  I  am  persuaded 
that  the  South  does  not  begin  to  appreciate  one  of  her 
most  gifted  sons,  the  foremost  American  poet  of  our 
generation,  the  lamented  Madison  Cawein. 

An  estimate  of  a  recently  deceased  author  should, 
I  suppose,  have  a  great  deal  to  say  about  that  author's 
personality.  Unfortunately,  however,  I  do  not  feel 
qualified  to  offer  much  testimony  regarding  the  per 
sonality  of  Cawein.  For  a  brief  time  several  years  ago 
I  had  some  correspondence  with  him,  and  on  one  happy 
occasion  I  had  the  pleasure  and  honor  of  conversing 
with  him;  but  Cawein  reminiscences  I  must  leave 
to  those  who  knew  the  beloved  Kentucky  singer  well. 
One  thing  I  will  venture,  though;  and  that  is  that  even 
slight  acquaintance  with  him  revealed  his  proverbial 
modesty.  Cawein  was  an  unassuming  -man,  and  there 
by  hangs  more  than  one  interesting  tale.  One  of  the 
most  charming  of  these  little  incidents  is  related  by  a 
close  lifelong  friend  of  the  poet's.  Cawein  sadly 

73 


74      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

underrated  some  of  his  best  work,  and  on  one  occasion 
he  was  about  to  destroy  a  particularly  fine  lyric.  The 
lyric  was  rescued  in  the  nick  of  time  and  published 
without  the  author's  knowledge;  and  so  completely 
had  Cawein  allowed  the  piece  to  pass  from  his  mind 
that  when  he  saw  it  in  print  he  did  not  recognize  it  as 
the  child  of  his  own  fancy. 

But  though  Madison  Cawein  depreciated  some  of 
his  best  poems,  he  seldom  made  the  mistake,  all  too 
common  among  poets,  of  considering  his  bad  verse 
good.  True,  he  was  prone  to  overestimate  his  epic 
powers — he  looked  upon  his  ponderous,  tedious  "Ac- 
colon  of  Gaul"  as  one  of  his  supreme  masterpieces; — 
but,  all  in  all,  he  had  an  exceedingly  good  knowledge 
of  his  limitations.  To  appreciate  this  fact,  one  has 
but  to  note  the  uniform  technical  excellence  of  Cawein's 
work. 

Much  has  been  written  about  Madison  Cawein — 
so  much,  indeed,  that  one  who  attempts  to  add  a  few 
words  must  guard  against  the  danger  of  wearying  the 
reader  with  threadbare  truisms.  Cawein's  amazing 
fecundity,  his  irresistible  tunefulness,  his  broad  range, 
his  ardently  romantic  imagination,  his  human  sym 
pathies,  his  dramatic  powers,  his  intense  love  for  his 
craft,  and  his  tremendous  influence  upon  the  lesser 
poets  of  his  day — these  are  facts  of  such  ancient  repute 
that  we  must  not  tarry  with  them  here. 

A  thing  not  nearly  so  well  known  about  Cawein  is 
that  he  was  an  adept  in  handling  the  sort  of  humorous 
dialect  verse  that  we  associate  most  closely  with  the 
name  of  James  Whitcomb  Riley.  Cawein  seldom 


MADISON   CAWEIN  75 

wrote  in  this  vein;  but  when  he  did,  it  was  with  the 
touch  of  a  master.  A  few  stanzas  of  "  Corncob  Jones, 
An  Oldham-County  Weather  Philosopher"  will  prove 
this: 

"Who  is  Corncob  Jones?"  you  say. 

Beatingest  man  and  talkingest: 
Talk  and  talk  th'  enduring  day, 

Never  even  stop  to  rest, 
Keep  on  talking  that  a-way, 

Talk  you  dead,  or  do  his  best. 

We  were  there  in  that  old  barn, 

Loafing  round  and  swapping  lies: 
There  was  Wiseheart,   talking  corn, 

Me  and  Raider  boosting  ryes, 
When  old  Corncob  sprung  a  yarn 

Just  to  give  us  a  surprise. 

"Why,  as  I  have  said  tofore," 

(Here  he  aimed  a  streak  of  brown 
At  a  hornet  on  the  floor, 

Got  him  too)  "you  put  hit  down 
To  experience,  nothin'  more, — 

Whut  they  call  hit  there  in  town. 

"Natur'  jest  rubs  in  the  thing — 

Jest  won't  let  a  man  ferget: 
Keeps  hit  up  spring  arter  spring — 

Why? — Jest  'cause  now  you  kin  bet, 
Blamed  blackberries  bloom,  by  Jing! 

They  jest  need  the  cold  and  wet." 

Let  me  return,  however,  to  more  salient  points. 
Let  me  dwell,  at  more  length,  upon  two  items  which 
are  perhaps  quite  as  obvious,  quite  as  widely  recognized 


76      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

as  any  which  I  have  mentioned.  One  reason,  in  my 
opinion,  why  Cawein  is  bound  to  go  down  in  literary 
history  as  one  of  our  most  considerable  American  bards 
is  that  he  had  profound  and  wholesome  respect  for  the 
standard  poetic  forms.  Long  after  erudite  students 
shall  have  ceased  to  worry  their  brains  about  the 
conceits  of  Donne  and  Herbert  and  Crashaw;  long  after 
most  of  Walt  Whitman's  "Leaves  of  Grass"  have 
grown  sere  and  have  returned  unto  dust;  long,  long  after 
men  have  forgotten  that  some  flowing-haired,  horn- 
spectacled  critic  once  pronounced  Ezra  Pound  wonder 
ful,  or  that  Ezra  Pound  ever  lived  and  moved  and  had 
his  being,  a  grateful  public  will  rejoice  that  Madison 
Cawein  sat  at  the  feet  of  Milton  the  Stately,  and  Keats 
the  Lovely,  and  hearkened  not  to  the  clanging  cymbals 
of  some  freakish  innovator,  some  stridently  clamorous 
mountebank  outside  the  gates  of  the  sacred  temple  of 
Poesy.  Cawein  carved  not  with  fragile  implements. 
The  ancient  and  honorable  sonnet  and  the  everlasting 
iambus  were  among  his  chief  working- tools.  And  why 
should  it  not  be  so?  Why,  in  the  name  of  Common 
Sense,  should  a  poet  seek  for  new  mediums  of  expression, 
when  with  the  old  he  could  sing  so  beautifully  as  thus?— 

This  is  the  tomboy  month  of  all  the  year, 

March,  who  comes   shouting  o'er  the  winter  hills, 
Waking  the  world  with  laughter,  as  she  wills, 

Or  wild  halloos,  a  windflower  in  her  ear. 

She  stops  a  moment  by  the  half-thawed  mere 

And  whistles  to  the  wind,  and  straightway  shrills 
The  hyla's  song,  and  hoods  of  daffodils 

Crowd  golden  'round  her,  leaning  their  heads  to  hear. 


MADISON   CAWEIN  77 

Then  through  the  woods  that  drip  with  all  their  eaves, 
Her  mad  hair  blown  about  her,  loud  she  goes 

Singing  and  calling  to  the  naked  trees, 
And  straight  the  oilets  of  the  little  leaves 
Open  their  eyes  in  wonder,  rows  on  rows, 
And  the  first  bluebird  bugles  to  the  breeze. 


Or  thus: 


I  took  the  road  again  last  night 
On  which  my  boyhood's  hills  look  down; 
The  old  road  leading  from  the  town, 
The  village  there  below  the  height, 
Its  cottage  homes,  all  huddled  brown, 
Each  with  its  blur  of  light. 

The  old  road,  full  of  ruts,  that  leads, 
A  winding  streak  of  limestone-grey, 
Over  the  hills  and  far  away; 
That's  crowded  here  by  arms  of  weeds 
And  elbows  of  rail-fence,  asway 
With  flowers  that  no  one  heeds: 

The  cricket  and  the  katydid 

Pierced  silence  with  their  stinging  sounds; 

The  firefly  went  its  golden  rounds, 

Where,  lifting  slow  one  sleepy  lid, 

The  baby  rosebud  dreamed;  and  mounds 

Of  lilies  breathed  half-hid. 

The  white  moon  waded  through  a  cloud, 

Like  some  pale  woman  through  a  pool: 

And  in  the  darkness,  close  and  cool 

I  felt  a  form  against  me  bowed, 

Her  breast  to  mine;  and  deep  and  full 

Her  maiden  heart  beat  loud. 


78      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

But  the  most  important  fact  about  Cawein  is,  I 
think,  that  he  was  a  great  nature  poet,  the  greatest 
that  his  country  has  yet  produced.  When  we  mention 
the  poetry  of  Bryant  and  Emerson,  our  first  thought  is 
of  nature;  yet  how  slight,  how  general  is  most  of  their 
nature  poetry  compared  with  Cawein's!  And  what 
other  American  nature  poet  dare  we  mention  in  the 
same  breath  with  Cawein?  Every  season  of  the  year, 
every  mood  of  earth  and  sky,  well-nigh  every  bird  and 
flower  and  weed  of  his  native  Kentucky  was  so  beauti 
ful  to  him  as  to  be  celebrated  in  song.  No  one  denies 
Cawein's  love  for  the  little  things  of  nature,  his  mar- 
velously  close  observation,  his  minute  accuracy  of 
description.  Indeed,  some  have  charged  that  he 
peered  too  closely,  that  he  crowded  his  canvas  too  full 
of  rank  undergrowth,  that  he  made  his  picture  as  be- 
wilderingly  prolix  and  as  wearisomely  prosy  as  the 
index  to  a  treatise  on  botany  or  ornithology.  But  they 
who  make  this  charge  know  not  whereof  they  speak. 
Ten  to  one,  they  have  never  learned  to  love  and  rever 
ence  Nature  herself.  Doubtless  they  and  their  ilk 
would  be  happier  with  Dryden  than  with  Keats,  more 
contented  in  a  drawing-room  at  any  season  or  hour 
than  in  Arcadia  on  the  loveliest  morning  God  ever  made. 
A  few  days  ago  I  casually  thumbed  a  volume  of 
Cawein.  It  was  like  the  calling  of  a  thousand  pleasant 
voices  from  pasture  and  woodland  and  roadside  and 
farm.  Now  the  whippoorwill  and  the  sheepbells 
welcomed  me,  and  a  lamp  was  lit  in  some  distant  farm 
house.'  Now  it  was^  August,  oppressive  with  dust  and 
drought,  ragweed  and  browned  meadows.  Now  a 


MADISON   CAWEIN  79 

clear  pool  with  speckled  trout  invited  me.  Now  the 
scene  changed  to  winter,  stern  with  yelling  winds  and 
smothered  white  fields.  And  anon  I  passed  a  deserted 
saw-mill,  a  lonely,  cabinless  chimney,  a  broken  gate, 
and  a  dilapidated  picket-fence,  all  starred  with  morn 
ing-glories  and  sweet-potato  blossoms.  "The  same 
old  pictures  again  and  again  and  again!"  you  cry  per 
chance.  Yes,  yes;  I'll  grant  you  that!  And  why  not? 
Does  an  operatic  air  lose  its  tunefulness  by  recurring 
twice  or  thrice?  Is  the  night  less  lovely  for  having 
ten  thousand  stars  instead  of  one?  Is  the  rosebush 
less  sweet  because  of  its  hundred  roses? 

Say  that  Madison  Cawein  was  sometimes  artificial 
and  often  commonplace.  Charge  him  with  being  too 
hasty,  too  prolific,  too  repetitious.  Point  out  his 
inferiority,  as  a  philosopher,  to  at  least  a  score  of 
other  American  bards  past  and  present.  But  verily, 
if  you  know  Cawein  and  nature  well,  you  will  never 
dream  of  denying  that  he  was  a  consummate  painter 
of  rural  scenes.  And  though  he  may  have  taken  you 
on  a  dozen  entrancing  journeys  to  Fairyland;  though 
he  may  often  have  delighted  your  soul  with  smooth 
numbers  and  easy  rimes,  though  he  may  even  have 
comforted  you  with  some  homely  bit  of  healthy 
optimism;  your  happiest  remembrance  of  him,  I  dare 
say,  will  be  that  he^taught  you  to  approach  Nature, 
advancing  with  awakened  senses ^and  open  heart. 


LOPSIDED  REALISM 

WHAT  is  wrong  with  present-day  American  fiction? 
It  will  scarcely  be  disputed,  I  think,  that  now, 
after  more  than  a  century  of  constant  effort, 
we   Americans    are   without   a    novelist   equal    to   the 
greatest  Victorian  English  writers  of  fiction.     Indeed, 
we  may  go  a  step  farther  and  assert  that  we  have  failed 
to   improve   upon   the  work   of  our  own   nineteenth- 
century  fiction  writers,  Hawthorne,  Bret  Harte,   and 
Mark  Twain. 

And  why?  Surely,  if  we  analyze  the  situation  we 
shall  see  many  reasons  why  American  fiction  to-day 
should  surpass  the  best  fiction  which  the  English 
language  has  produced  in  the  past.  Our  growth  from 
national  youth  to  national  maturity,  our  ever  widening 
field  of  material,  the  many  lessons  of  the  past,  the 
greatly  increased  facilities  for  the  study  of  literary 
technique — these  and  a  score  of  like  circumstances 
should  give  us  greater  fiction  than  we  have  ever  had 
before. 

Yet  where  are  our  twentieth-century  American 
Dickenses,  Thackerays,  and  George  Eliots?  What 
novel  written  in  this  country  within  the  past  fifteen 
years  bids  fair  to  take  its  permanent  place  beside 
"David  Copperfield",  "Vanity  Fair",  "Adam  Bede", 
or — to  go  back  two  or  three  generations  further — "Pride 
and  Prejudice",  "Mansfield  Park",  or  "Tom  Jones"? 
What  four  living  American  novelists  can  vie  with 
such  British  contemporaries,  even,  as  John  Galsworthy, 

80 


LOPSIDED   REALISM  81 

Arnold  Bennett,  H.  G.  Wells,  and  Hugh  Walpole? 
The  most  optimistic  admirer  of  present-day  American 
fiction  will,  I  daresay,  fear  to  attempt  an  answer  to 
these  questions. 

An  excuse  frequently  offered  for  our  dearth  of  im 
portant  novels  is  that  public  taste  is  bad — in  other 
words,  that  the  work  of  such  writers  as  Gene  Stratton 
Porter,  Harold  Bell  Wright,  Robert  W.  Chambers, 
Edna  Ferber,  Anna  Katharine  Green,  and  others  of 
their  ilk  easily  outsells  the  most  meritorious  fiction  on 
the  market.  But  this  is  not  nearly  so  good  an  excuse 
as  it  might  at  first  seem  to  be.  Public  taste  has  never 
been  a  whit  better  than  it  is  now.  Witness,  as  proof 
of  this,  the  tremendous  vogue  of  Mary  J.  Holmes, 
Augusta  Evans  Wilson,  Mrs.  E.  D.  E.  N.  Southworth, 
"The  Duchess",  Charlotte  M.  Braeme,  May  Agnes 
Fleming,  E.  P.  Roe,  James  Payn,  and  numerous  other 
American  and  English  best-sellers  of  half  a  century  ago. 

A  second  and  more  plausible  excuse  offered  for  the 
failure  of  American  fiction  is  that  the  past  twenty-five  or 
thirty  years  has  seen  the  production  of  altogether  too 
much  commonplace  realism.  And  those  who  advance 
this  excuse  are  doubtless  prepared  to  train  their  most 
deadly  guns  against  such  writers  as  Mr.  Howells,  Mrs. 
Wilkins-Freeman,  Miss  Alice  Brown,  and  the  late 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett.  In  the  final  analysis,  however, 
can  it  be  claimed  that  these  charming  writers  have 
retarded  the  progress  of  American  fiction?  Doubtless 
they  have  done  much  that  was  hardly  worth  doing. 
Doubtless  they  have  often  caused  us  to  exclaim: 
"Very  true  and  very  beautiful!  but  what  of  it?"  On 


82      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

the  whole,  however,  these  so-called  "commonplace 
realists"  have  done  so  much  that  is  fresh  and  new 
and  human,  have  wrought  so  artistically,  that  any 
apologist  who  cites  them  as  stumbling-blocks  in  the 
way  of  the  great  American  novel  is  treading  on  danger 
ous  ground.  Indeed,  he  is  inviting  a  challenge  to  the 
difficult  task  of  pointing  out  better  contemporary 
American  fiction  writers  than  the  ones  whom  he  con 
demns. 

In  response  to  this  challenge  our  apologist  will 
surely  offer  the  names  of  Edith  Wharton,  Robert 
Grant,  Theodore  Dreiser,  and  Robert  Herrick.  Prob 
ably,  too,  he  will  speak  a  good  word  in  behalf  of  such 
books  as  Reginald  Wright  Kauffman's  "House  of 
Bondage"  and  Louis  Joseph  Vance's  "Joan  Thursday". 

And  here  we  arrive  at  the  most  vital  point  in  the 
whole  situation!  The  Wharton-Grant-Dreiser-Herrick 
school  is  frankly  a  revolt  against  what  critics  have  been 
pleased  to  call  "Mid- Victorian  prudishness."  With 
Turgenev,  Ibsen,  Dostoievski,  Flaubert,  Zola,  Daudet, 
Sudermann,  and  other  Continentals  as  their  models — 
not  to  mention  those  most  un-British  of  Britishers, 
Thomas  Hardy  and  George  Moore — these  later  Ameri 
can  realists  have  sought  to  jar  us  out  of  all  the  self- 
complacency  we  ever  had.  Aided  and  abetted  by  such 
dramatists  as  Sir  Arthur  W.  Pinero,  Henry  Arthur 
Jones,  and  our  own  Eugene  Walter,  they  have  labored 
right  valiantly  to  convince  us  that  ours  is  not  a  sweet, 
bright  land  at  all;  but  a  land  of  crime,  adultery,  white- 
slavery,  industrial  oppression,  suicide,  domestic  in 
felicity  and  infidelity,  and  well-nigh  everything  else 


LOPSIDED  REALISM  83 

that  is  bad.  Our  grandfathers'  Colonel  Newcomes  and 
our  grandmothers'  Agnes  Wickfields  are  too  absurdly 
innocent,  too  hopelessly  unsophisticated,  if  you  please! 
The  Reverend  Septimus  Harding  may  have  lived  and 
moved  and  had  his  being  in  the  rarified  air  of  mid- 
Victorian  Barchester;  but,  bless  you!  he  is  far  too 
angelic  for  twentieth-century  America.  Dinah  Morris 
may  have  graced  Loamshire  a  century  ago,  but  the 
atmosphere  which  we  are  called  upon  to  breathe  would 
undoubtedly  poison  her  instantly.  Such  heroes  and 
heroines  as  these  have  no  place  in  our  sterner  realism. 
Instead,  we  are  treated  to  a  much  more  stirring 
spectacle:  the  sinful  mistress  of  a  drunken,  bestial 
consort;  a  loathsome  inebriate  beating  and  kicking 
his  pregnant  wife,  with  hideous  consequences  to  the 
offspring;  a  silly  girl  who  wakes  to  find  herself  a  prisoner 
in  a  house  of  ill  fame;  a  miserable  bastard  hounded  to 
suicide  by  the  slings  and  arrows  of  a  convention-bound 
society;  a  social  climber  eager  to  sell  herself  body  and 
soul  for  a  little  more  prestige;  a  scheming  financier 
who  robs  his  employer  and  violates  the  chastity  of  that 
employer's  daughter;  a  man  who  finds  it  better  to  die 
with  another  woman  than  to  live  with  his  invalid  wife; 
a  nurse  who  calmly  puts  a  suffering  rival  out  of  her 
misery. 

And  alas  for  the  chicken-hearted  reader  who  is 
nauseated  by  this  spectacle!  Alas  for  him  who  cries 
out  with  poor  old  Lear,  "An  ounce  of  civet,  good 
apothecary,  to  sweeten  my  imagination ! "  This  genera 
tion,  we  are  told,  is  a  truth-loving  generation,  and 
must  have  the  whole  truth,  however  much  it  may  hurt. 


84      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

But  here  let  us  pause  and  proceed  to  satisfy  ourselves 
on  one  point.  As  regards  this  stern  truth,  is  it,  in  the 
largest  sense,  truth  at  all?  If  I  photograph  Farmer 
Brown's  pig-sty  and  label  it  "a  typical  scene  on  Mr. 
Brown's  farm,"  am  I  altogether  just  to  the  good  farmer? 
If  I  publish  a  photograph  of  Whitechapel  or  Hounds- 
ditch,  and  place  under  it  the  inscription,  "A  repre 
sentative  London  thoroughfare,"  am  I  more  truthful 
than  if  I  had  done  the  same  with  Piccadilly  or  Regent 
Street?  Has  an  ash-pile  or  a  garbage-heap  necessarily 
.more  artistic  value,  even  in  prose,  than  a  lilac-bush  or  a 
pansy-bed  ? 

Before  we  attempt  to  answer  these  questions  let  us 
remind  ourselves  that  the  foremost  Victorian  novels 
are  nothing  if  not  typical.  They  are  great  because 
they  are  broadly  human,  and  they  are  broadly  human 
because  they  present  in  a  comprehensive  manner  that 
which  is  truly  representative.  From  them  we  learn 
not  simply  one  phase  of  Victorian  life,  but  all  of  the 
most  characteristic  phases.  We  learn  that  the  typical 
Victorian  had  some  foibles — and  a  great  many  good 
qualities.  We  learn  that  he  was  sometimes  given  to 
inebriety  and  gambling,  snobbishness  and  false  am 
bition,  immorality  and  crime;  but  that  more  frequently 
he  found  pleasure  in  the  more  wholesome  occupations 
of  hunting  and  fishing,  coaching  and  driving,  tea  and 
cribbage,  balls  and  operas.  We  learn,  above  all,  that 
he  was  a  highly  domesticated  being,  generally  pure  and 
chivalrous  in  his  relations  with  women. 

The  question  arises,  now:  Are  we  so  much  baser,  so 
much  more  degraded  than  the  Victorians  were?  Let 


LOPSIDED  REALISM  85 

us  see.  With  an  annual  divorce  rate  of  about  seventy- 
five  per  hundred  thousand  population;  with  an  annual 
illegitimate  birth  rate  of  not  more  than  twenty  per 
hundred  thousand  population;  with  a  yearly  suicide 
toll  of  perhaps  fifteen  thousand;  and  with  a  total  prison 
population  well  under  the  two  hundred  thousand 
mark,  we  may  well  protest  that  we  are  not  nearly  so 
black  as  some  of  our  foremost  realists  would  paint  us. 
In  other  words,  it  is  the  exceptional  American,  not  the 
average  American,  who  is  desperately  bad  or  hopelessly 
unfortunate. 

Some  of  the  captious,  of  course,  will  complain  that  I 
am  deliberately  misconceiving  and  misinterpreting  the 
purpose  of  art;  that  art  is,  above  all,  a  teacher;  that  the 
greatest  lesson  man  can  learn  is  that  the  wages  of  sin 
is  death;  and  that  we  can  best  teach  this  lesson,  in  art 
as  in  law,  by  holding  up  horrible  examples.  Someone 
may  even  remind  me  that  the  most  remarkable  theolo 
gian  of  our  Colonial  period  had  a  great  deal  more  to  say 
about  sinners  in  the  hands  of  an  angry  God  than  about 
harps  in  the  hands  of  angels. 

In  this  connection,  we  may,  I  believe,  obtain  an 
impressive  object  lesson  from  one  of  the  most  marvelous 
of  paintings,  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  "The  Last  Supper." 
Easily  the  two  most  striking  figures  in  this  wonderful 
painting  are,  of  course,  the  Christ  and  Judas.  The 
face  of  the  one  is  ineffably  sublime;  of  the  other,  un 
speakably  contemptible.  Each  has  tremendous  ar 
tistic  and  ethical  value.  Yet  I  wonder  how  many  good 
deeds  in  a  naughty  world  have  been  prompted  by  the 
revolting  spectacle  of  Judas.  I  wonder  whether  it  is 


86      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

not  true  that  for  every  soul  turned  from  sin  by  the 
unlovely  picture  of  the  betrayer,  a  hundred  have  been 
inspired  to  noble  deeds  by  the  countenance  of  the 
Master.  Is  not  art,  after  all,  more  positive  than  nega 
tive?  Is  not  this  thing  which  some  of  us  have  been 
terming  "Victorian  prudishness"  more  properly 
termed  "Victorian  wholesomeness"? 

Let  us  have  done  with  this  lopsided  realism  which  has 
floated  northward  across  the  English  Channel,  and 
westward  across  the  Atlantic  during  the  past  generation, 
and  has  made  many  wiseacres  think  that  no  other 
realism  is  genuine.  Let  us  refuse  as  steadfastly  as  ever 
to  turn  our  backs  in  good  old  Hopkinson  Smith  fashion 
against  all  manner  of  unpleasantness.  Ay,  let  us 
continue  to  be  frank.  But  let  us  also  be  sane.  Let 
us  have  true  perspective.  Give  us  a  few  Little  Em'lys 
and  Hetty  Sorrels — even  as  life  gives  them — but  keep 
these  unfortunate  creatures  as  wisely  in  the  background 
as  the  broadly  comprehensive  Victorians  kept  them. 

In  turning  from  the  sordid,  narrow  realism  which 
has  straitened  American  fiction  too  long,  we  naturally 
look  for  signs  of  something  bigger,  broader,  better. 
Depressed  by  incessant  gloom,  we  look  eagerly  for  a 
patch  of  blue  sky.  We  look  for  a  type  of  narrative 
art  which,  while  facing  courageously  and  honestly 
the  disagreeable  facts  of  life,  yet  feels  that  life  is,  in  the 
final  analysis,  eminently  worth  living — that  God's  in 
His  heaven  and  all's  right  with  the  world.  We  seek 
for  an  art  which  is  neither  mean  nor  commonplace, 
neither  putrid  nor  sappy.  And  we  do  not  seek  in  vain. 

True,  all  of  the  American  novelists  whom  I  would 


LOPSIDED   REALISM  87 

name  as  auguries  of  a  bright,  new  day  have  their 
pronounced  limitations.  Mrs.  Deland,  for  instance, 
shows  too  much  artistic  sameness — seldom  wanders 
far  enough  away  from  her  beloved  Old  Chester.  Mr. 
Tarkington,  until  the  advent  of  that  admirable  piece, 
"The  Turmoil",  has  always  been  a  bit  too  trivial 
and  much  too  melodramatic.  Mr.  Churchill  is  ever  too 
diffuse  and  sometimes  intolerably  didactic.  And  Mr. 
Henry  Sydnor  Harrison  tries  so  hard  to  be  clever  that 
often  he  is  not  clever  at  all.  Yet  this  notable  quartet 
have  the  true  gift  and  the  true  spirit.  And  there  are 
others  worthy  of  serious  consideration.  James  Lane 
Allen,  George  W.  Cable,  Dorothy  Canfield,  John  Fox 
Jr.,  Zona  Gale,  Hamlin  Garland,  Ellen  Glasgow,  Will 
N.  Harben,  Mary  Johnston,  the  late  S.  Weir  Mitchell, 
Arnold  Mulder,  James  Oppenheim,  Thomas  Nelson 
Page,  Georgia  Wood  Pangborn,  Georg  Schock,  Mary 
S.  Watts,  and  Owen  Wister — each  of  these  has  con 
tributed  something,  in  a  sanely  catholic  way,  to 
modern  American  realism.  The  situation  is  far  from 
hopeless.  If  one  but  looks  in  the  right  direction,  what 
an  abundance  of  good  story-telling  one  finds!  What 
a  wealth  of  vivid  background,  clearcut  characterization, 
and  dramatic  power!  Above  all,  what  a  broad,  whole 
some,  life-like  blending  of  the  pleasant  and  the  un 
pleasant,  the  joyous  and  the  sad,  the  noble  and  the 
ignoble! 

The  stage  is  well  set  for  the  entrance  of  the  Great 
American  Novel.  The  lesser  Thespians,  Trivial 
Realism  and  Sordid  Realism,  have  well-nigh  done  with 
their  strutting.  The  half-gods  are  about  to  go.  And 


88      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

right  well  have  they  played  their  little  part.  They 
have  taught  us  candor  and  technique,  at  any  rate. 
The  player  who  is  about  to  enter  will  be  more  concise 
and  precise  than  the  Victorians  were.  Indeed,  the 
too-copious  sentimentalism  of  Dickens,  the  over- 
subjectivity  of  Thackeray,  and  the  clumsy  circumlocu 
tion  of  George  Eliot  have  already  made  their  exit. 
Our  new  player  will  be  guided  by  the  artistic  economy 
and  straightforwardness  of  the  Continentals  and  Mr. 
Hardy  and  Mrs.  Wharton.  But  for  scope  and  per 
spective  and  philosophy  of  life,  he  will  revert  to  those 
good  old  side-whiskered  prigs  and  hoop-skirted  prudes 
whom  we  have  despised  too  long. 


IS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH? 

WHEN   we   ask  the    question,   Is  our  literature 
still   English?  we  tacitly  admit,  by  the  use  of 
the  word  still,  that    heretofore  our  literature 
has  been  strikingly  English.      And   the    obvious   fact 
which   compels   this  admission    is  a  great    deal    more 
surprising  than  it  would,  at  first  glance,  appear  to  be. 

We  occasionally  speak  of  England  as  our  mother 
country,  and  we  often  refer  loosely  to  ourselves  as  an 
Anglo-Saxon  nation;  but  when  we  remember  that 
America  was  first  discovered  by  Norsemen  and  later 
by  Italians  and  Spaniards;  that  from  the  very  earliest 
Colonial  times  it  has  counted  Dutch,  Germans,  Swedes, 
and  French  among  important  elements  in  its  popula 
tion;  and  that  it  now  is  the  foster-mother  of  practically 
every  race  and  nation  under  the  sun — our  words  about 
our  Anglo-Saxon  origin  and  make-up  lose  much  of  their 
significance.  In  whatever  sense  England  may  have 
been  our  mother  between  1607  and  1776,  we  have,  in 
most  respects,  wandered  far  from  the  proverbial 
maternal  apron-strings.  Not  content  with  our  declara 
tion  of  July  4,  1776,  we  have  been  declaring  and  re- 
declaring  our  independence  in  a  hundred  ways  ever 
since.  We  have  isolated  and  fortified  ourselves  with 
a  Monroe  Doctrine  and  a  protective  tariff;  established 
an  educational  system  which  is  more  German  than 
English,  and  more  American  than  either;  welcomed 
Jew  and  Gentile,  Greek  and  barbarian,  Slav  and  Teuton, 
Celt  and  Latin,  to  our  shores  on  equal  terms.  English 


90      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

conservatism  and  reverence  for  tradition;  English 
caution  and  reticence;  English  pride  in  family  trees; 
English  patience  and  courtesy  and  gentleness — these 
are  things  which  we  Americans  despise  with  almost 
vandalic  aversion. 

Yet  the  most  cursory  glance  will  show  us  that,  so 
far  as  literature  is  concerned,  we  have  been,  throughout 
our  colonial  and  national  existence,  remarkably  English. 
It  will  convince  us  that  the  country  which  ruled  us  for 
a  century  and  three  quarters,  and  which  gave  us  a 
permanent  national  language,  has  likewise  insisted 
that  we  share  with  her  a  common  literature.  Our 
earliest  American  writers  were  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  Englishmen  sojourning  in  the  new  country,  and 
they  had  precisely  the  same  right  to  be  termed 
American,  as  had  Charles  Dickens,  when  he  wrote 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  or  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett,  when  he 
produced  Your  United  States.  Furthermore,  nearly 
every  American  work  ever  published  prior  to  the 
nineteenth  century  was  written  in  New  England  or  in 
Virginia.  If  one  looks  for  the  history  of  early  Dutch 
literature  in  New  York,  early  Swedish  literature  in 
Delaware,  early  German  literature  in  Pennsylvania, 
or  early  French  literature  in  the  Middle  or  Southern 
states,  one  literally  stares  at  blank  pages.  Our  Colonial 
annals  furnish  no  parallel  to  the  French  literature  of 
Canada,  the  French  and  Italian  literature  of  Switzer 
land,  the  Flemish  literature  of  Belgium,  the  Polish 
literature  of  Russia,  or  the  Slavonic  literature  of 
Austria-Hungary.  Even  when  New  England  and  the 
South  ceased  to  have  a  monopoly  on  American  authors, 


IS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?    91 

we  still  find  practically  all  of  our  writing  done  by  the 
descendants  of  Englishmen.  The  only  great  man  of 
letters  produced  by  Colonial  Pennsylvania,  for  instance, 
was  not  a  German;  but  Benjamin  Franklin,  a  simon- 
pure  New  England  Yankee.  And  if  we  look  to  Dutch 
New  Jersey  during  the  same  period,  we  find  a  single 
noteworthy  name,  that  of  John  Woolman,  an  English 
Quaker.  Indeed,  the  only  prominent  non-British 
names  to  be  found  in  American  literature  before  the 
year  1800  are  Philip  Freneau  and  Hector  St.  Jean 
Crevecoeur,  and  both  these  writers  used  the  English 
language  as  their  medium  of  expression. 

Moreover,  our  early  national  literary  history  is  but 
a  repetition  of  the  same  old  tale.  During  the  first 
half  century  of  our  existence  as  an  independent  nation 
nearly  one  million  aliens  came  to  our  shores,  and  of 
these  newcomers  a  very  large  proportion  were  non- 
English-speaking  people.  From  the  very  close  of  the 
Revolution  to  the  present  time,  we  have  steadily  grown 
less  and  less  Anglo-Saxon  in  blood.  But  let  us  make  a 
list  of  the  chief  American  writers  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Such  list  must  include  the  names  of  Brown, 
Drake,  Halleck,  Irving,  Cooper,  Bryant,  Alcott,  Fuller, 
Emerson,  Stowe,  Thoreau,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow, 
Whittier,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Prescott,  Motley,  Parkman, 
Taylor,  Poe,  Simms,  Timrod,  Hayne,  Lanier,  Stedman, 
Harte,  Aldrich,  Clemens,  and  Howells.  Yet  how  many 
of  these  thirty  names  would  sound  essentially  foreign  to 
a  British  ear?  Absolutely  none  but  the  two  names 
Lanier  and  Thoreau.  And  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  Laniers,  though  obviously  of  French  origin, 


92      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

became  thoroughly  Anglicized  by  a  long  residence  in 
England  many  generations  before  the  birth  of  Sidney 
Lanier. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  is  it  any  wonder  that  Andrew 
Lang  made  so  bold  as  to  regard  our  literature  as  a  sort 
of  colonial  branch  of  English  literature,  belonging  in  the 
same  category  as  the  writings  of  Canada  and  Australia? 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  Mr.  John  Macy,  at  the  beginning 
of  his  Spirit  of  American  Literature,  dogmatically 
declares  American  literature  to  be  "a  branch  of  English 
literature,  as  truly  as  are  English  books  written  in 
Scotland  or  South  Africa"? 

In  an  article  in  Harper's  for  March,  1913,  Professor 
Thomas  R.  Lounsbury  calls  attention  to  the  prediction 
once  made  that  the  language  of  America  would  one 
day  be  markedly  different  from  that  of  Britain.  This 
prophecy  seems  now,  in  the  light  of  actual  history,  as 
absurd  as  it  must  have  seemed  natural  and  plausible 
when  it  was  made. 

Several  years  ago  on  a  transatlantic  liner,  the  writer 
chanced  to  overhear  an  animated  colloquy  between  a 
cocksure  Englishman  and  a  bumptious  German- 
American.  The  Englishman,  it  appeared,  had  been 
trying  to  prove  that  America  was  indebted  to  the 
mother  country  for  practically  everything,  from 
government  to  dinner-jackets.  And  the  German- 
American  was  insistent  that  we  owed  practically 
nothing  to  England — not  even  our  language.  "We 
don't  speak  English,"  he  declared;  "we  speak  United 
States."  "But,  I  say,"  replied  the  Englishman  with 
quiet  sarcasm,  "your  blooming  United  States,  in  spite 


IS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?    93 

of  all  its  faults — its  beastly  burr  and  old-maid  'ants' 
and  'toons'  and  'dooties'- — is  a  jolly  close  imitation  of 
English." 

In  the  foregoing  argument  Percy  certainly  had  the 
better  of  Hans.  English,  as  our  national  vernacular, 
has  come  to  stay.  No  thinking  person  doubts  that  now. 
And  the  past  has  indeed  given  us  reason  to  wonder 
whether  our  literature  may  not  be  as  permanently 
English  as  is  our  language.  Yet  the  present  is  fraught 
with  many  new  signs — many  signs  which  make  us 
persist  in  the  query:  Is  our  literature  still  English? 

With  a  million  foreigners  entering  our  country 
annually  (less  than  one-sixth  of  whom  are  natives  of 
English-speaking  territory);  with  fourteen  per  cent  of 
our  total  population  foreign-born;  with  an  additional 
twenty-one  per  cent  born  of  foreign  parents;  and  with 
an  overwhelming  majority  of  our  people  partially  or 
wholly  Continental  in  descent,  we  have  abundant 
reason  to  look  for  the  outcropping  of  strikingly  un- 
English  traits  in  our  literature. 

Attention  has  been  called  to  the  dearth  of  non- 
British  names  among  American  authors,  both  Colonial 
and  nineteenth-century.  For  the  sake  of  comparison, 
it  might  be  well  to  look  at  a  few  familiar  contemporary 
American  literary  names — such  names  as  Van  Dyke, 
Repplier,  Bynner,  Guiterman,  Cawein,  Roosevelt, 
Oppenheim,  Dreiser,  Kauffman,  Neihardt,  Knoblauch, 
Santayana,  Schauffler,  Viereck,  Benet,  Hagedorn,  and 
Untermeyer.  Obviously,  if  there  is  anything  in  a  sur 
name,  we  Americans  are  no  longer  dependent  solely 
upon  Anglo-Saxons  for  our  literature. 


94      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

But  we  must  get  at  more  vital  matters.  We  must 
see  whether  or  not  our  literature  itself  is  actually  under 
going  marked  changes  which  tend  to  brand  it  as  in 
creasingly  un-English.  To  reach  any  definite  conclu 
sions  in  this  matter,  we  shall  find  it  necessary  to  consider 
two  things:  subject-matter,  and  method  of  treatment. 

Of  course,  it  is  very  easy  to  point  out  that  we  have 
always  had  authors  who  have  shown  certain  un-English 
characteristics,  both  in  matter  and  in  manner.  For 
example,  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  such  themes  as  the 
Indians  of  J.  Fenimore  Cooper  and  William  Gilmore 
Simms,  the  prairies  of  Francis  Parkman,  the  quaint 
Dutch-American  characters  of  Washington  Irving,  and 
the  fiery  anti-slavery  tirades  of  John  G.  Whittier  could 
never  have  derived  their  inspiration  from  the  British 
Isles.  And  to  a  close  student,  a  subtle  analyst,  it  is 
equally  evident  that  the  bald,  bare  moralizing  which 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  Lowell  frequently  indulged 
in  would  differentiate  each  of  them  sharply  from  any 
English  Victorian  poet.  But,  certainly,  Indians  and 
prairies  are  as  typically  Canadian  as  they  are  American, 
and  the  moralizing  bent  of  our  nineteenth  century  New 
England  bards  may  be  traced  directly  to  ancestors  of 
pure  English  stock.  Moreover,  even  when  Washington 
Irving  is  dealing  with  Dutch-Americans,  he  is  so 
patently  Anglo-Saxon  in  his  viewpoint  that  he  might  as 
well  be  an  Englishman  patronizingly  interpreting|the 
life  and  customs  of  Holland.  Truly,  the  Anglophobe 
who  surveys  American  literary  history  of  the  seven 
teenth,  eighteeth,  and  nineteenth  centuries^finds  scant 
cause  for  rejoicing. 


JS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?    95 

Turning,  now,  from  the  past  to  the  present,  we  must 
bear  in  mind  that  we  are  not  concerned  with  the 
questions:  Is  our  literature  improving?  or,  Is  our 
literature  becoming  more  distinctively  American? 
We  are  simply  concerned  with  the  query:  Is  our  litera 
ture  still  English? 

To  the  person  who  would  answer  this  last-mentioned 
question  affirmatively  let  me  suggest  a  brief  survey  of 
backgrounds.  Let  me  suggest  a  glance  at  the  cosmo 
politan  East  Side  characters  of  the  late  Myra  Kelly, 
the  Jews  of  James  Oppenheim,  the  Italians  of  T.  A. 
Daly,  the  Pennsylvania  Germans  of  Georg  Schock  and 
Helen  R.  Martin,  the  Lousiana  French  of  George  W. 
Cable,  and  the  Michigan  Dutch  of  Arnold  Mulder. 
Here,  surely,  we  have  half  a  dozen  backgrounds  which 
are  as  un-English  as  they  can  be. 

When  we  pass  from  subject-matter  to  technique,  we 
are  treading  on  dangerous  ground;  for  we  are  raising 
a  number  of  rather  difficult  questions.  Can  English 
literature  be  classed  as  a  definite  entity,  sharply  dis 
tinguished  from  the  various  kinds  of  Continental 
literature?  Taking  such  catalogue  as  a  criterion,  can 
we  find  a  sharp  line  of  cleavage  between  English  and 
American  literature?  If  there  is  such  thing  as  a  dis 
tinctively  Continental  technique,  is  that  technique 
followed  more  by  non-English  American  writers  than 
by  American  writers  of  prevailingly  English  stock? 
Is  a  tendency  to  follow  Continental  methods 
necessarily  resultant  from  the  fact .  that  the  Con 
tinental  elements  in  our  population  are  becoming 
relatively  stronger  and  stronger  numerically? 


96      PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

It  would  be  folly  to  declare  that  any  of  these  questions 
can  be  answered  with  absolute  finality;  but  one  can, 
at  least,  bring  forth  certain  facts  which  bear  closely 
upon  the  questions. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  fairly  safe  to  assert  that  there 
has  been,  in  the  history  of  the  English  literature,  one 
period  which  may  be  regarded  as  more  typically  English 
than  any  other.  Assuredly,  that  period  was  not  the 
Elizabethan  period,  with  its  strikingly  un-English, 
almost  Celtic  exhilaration,  volubility,  lack  of  reticence. 
Nor  was  it  the  Jacobean  period,  with  its  strange, 
abnormal  contrast  of  somber  Puritanism  and  rollicking 
libertinism.  Nor  was  it  the  Classical  period,  with  its 
thoroughly  un-English  grossness,  soullessness,  arti 
ficiality,  hatred  of  democracy,  and  contempt  for 
nature.  Nor,  yet,  was  it  the  Romantic  period,  with 
its  well-nigh  Oriental  delight  in  the  wild,  the  remote, 
the  improbable,  the  gaudy.  It  must,  therefore,  by 
the  process  of  elimination,  have  been  the  Victorian 
period,  that  period  during  which  the  liberty-loving 
Anglo-Saxon  race  made  its  greatest  developments  along 
the  lines  of  democracy. 

How,  then,  may  the  Victorian  period  be  charac 
terized?  What  traits  may  be  safely  set  down  as 
typically  Victorian?  In  attempting  an  answer,  we 
shall  do  well  to  consider  the  poetry  of  that  arch- 
Victorian,  Tennyson,  whom  minor  contemporaries 
followed  to  a  remarkable  degree,  and  with  whom  even 
Browning  and.  the  Pre-Raphaelites  had  much  in 
common.  Undeniably  Tennyson — together  with  a 
clear  majority  of  his  fellow-Victorians — evinced  such 


is  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?  97 

marked  qualities  as  a  correctness  of  form,  a  spirit  of 
scientific  accuracy,  a  tendency  toward  religious  and 
philosophic  questioning,  a  willingness  for  gradual 
change  (change  which  broadens  down  "from  precedent 
to  precedent"),  a  distaste  for  things  ugly  or  repulsive, 
a  provincially  English  mental  attitude,  and  a  com 
parative  indifference  to  the  remote  past.  Add  to  these 
qualities  the  things  which  the  three  leading  Victorian 
novelists,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  George  Eliot, 
possessed  in  common:  a  thoroughly  subjective  point  of 
view  (in  contradistinction  to  Continental  objectivism); 
an  accompanying  tendency  to  intersperse  one's  story 
with  philosophic  moralizing  and  general  "editorial 
comment";  and,  finally  (in  contrast  to  relentless 
Continental  naturalism),  a  bent  for  tingeing  all  realism 
with  the  idealistic.  And  here  you  have  the  quin 
tessence  of  Victorianism.  Here  you  have  certain  de 
finite  strata  which  run  through  the  English  literature 
of  all  time,  underlying  the  surface  differences  of  Eliza- 
bethanism,  Classicism,  Romanticism,  twentieth-cen 
tury-ism,  and  so  forth.  Here  you  have  a  tolerably 
correct  differentiation  of  the  literature  of  Britain  from 
that  of  the  Continent. 

A  comparison  of  English  and  American  literature  is 
now  in  order.  At  this  point  we  encounter  plenty  of 
difficulties;  for  American  literature  is  so  heterogeneous, 
so  sectional,  so  lacking  in  traits  that  are  peculiarly 
national,  that  it  defies  a  comprehensive  definition. 
Nevertheless,  our  writers  from  New  England  to  the 
Pacific  coast,  and  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the 
lakes,  show  a  few  common  tendencies  so  marked  that 


98       PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

we  have  a  certain  criterion,  after  all.  Take,  for  in 
stance,  the  New  England  stories  of  Mary  E.  Wilkins- 
Freeman,  the  Southern  stories  of  Thomas  Nelson 
Page,  the  New  York  stories  of  Edith  Wharton,  and  the 
Western  stories  of  Hamlin  Garland  and  Owen  Wister. 
Their  striking  objectivism  will  become  entirely  ob 
vious,  if  we  compare  them  with  Victorian  fiction,  or  if 
we  compare  them  with  the  fiction  of  such  present-day 
English  writers  as  Mrs.  Ward,  Hewlett,  De  Morgan, 
Locke,  and  even  Bennett.  To  be  specific,  note  the 
difference  between  Mrs.  Wharton's  impartial,  repor- 
torial,  objective  way  of  telling  a  tale,  and  the  im 
pertinent  comment  which  Thomas  Hardy  makes  about 
the  Immortals  at  the  end  of  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles. 
Take  the  gloomy,  over-sexed  plays  of  Eugene  Walter, 
of  the  late  Clyde  Fitch,  and  of  numerous  lesser  Ameri 
can  dramatists,  and  if  you  would  find  an  English 
parallel  to  them,  you  will  be  almost  obliged  to  turn  to 
the  problem  plays  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero, — who,  by  the 
way,  is  not  a  Briton  at  all,  but  the  son  of  a  Portuguese 
Jew.  Take  the  "challenge"  poetry  of  Louis  Unter- 
meyer,  the  whimsical  poetry  of  Vachel  Lindsay  and 
John  Hall  Wheelock,  and  the  futurist  poetry  of  Ezra 
Pound  and  all  his  ilk;  and  where  shall  you  find  any 
thing  approaching  an  English  counterpart?  Where, 
indeed?  Perhaps  in  the  buried  annals  of  Pre-Raphaeli- 
tism;  possibly,  to  a  small  degree,  in  Masefield,  Yeats, 
and  D.  H.  Lawrence;  certainly  not  in  such  character 
istic  twentieth-century  English  poets  as  Kipling, 
Watson,  Noyes,  Binyon,  Newbolt,  Drinkwater,  or 
Davies. 


IS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?    99 

This  brings  us  back  to  our  third  question:  Is  Con 
tinental  technique  followed  more  by  non-English 
American  writers  than  by  American  writers  of  pre 
vailingly  English  stock?  This,  I  should  say,  is  a  well- 
nigh  futile  question.  Doubtless  it  is  true  that  Whit 
man,  who  was  partly  Dutch  in  blood,  was  far  more 
Continental,  far  less  English,  in  spirit  and  in  method, 
than  was  Lowell,  who  was  of  pure  Anglo-Saxon  stock. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  true  that  Robert 
Herrick,  a  present-day  writer  of  English  descent,  is 
essentially  Continental  in  technique;  whereas  Henry 
Van  Dyke,  a  contemporary  of  Dutch  stock,  has  im 
bibed  as  much  of  the  spirit  of  Victorian  English  litera 
ture  as  has  perhaps  any  living  American  author. 

Now  we  come  to  our  final  question:  Is  a  tendency  to 
follow  Continental  methods  necessarily  resultant  from 
the  fact  that  the  Continental  elements  in  our  popula 
tion  are  becoming  relatively  stronger  and  stronger 
numerically?  Whether  one  answers  this  question 
affirmatively  or  negatively,  one  can  at  least  assert 
that  two  facts  stand  out  side  by  side:  first,  that  the 
American  race  is  much  more  Continental  than  it  was 
fifty  years  ago;  and  secondly,  that  the  same  is  true  of 
American  literature.  The  first  of  these  two  facts  is  a 
matter  of  simple  figures;  and  as  regards  the  second — 
it  will  scarcely  be  denied,  for  instance,  that  Hawthorne's 
Arthur  Dimmesdale  is  far  more  English  in  temperament 
and  in  attitude  toward  life  than  is  Theodore  Dreiser's 
Frank  Calderwood.  And  further  support  for  this 
point  will  be  found  in  what  I  have  already  indicated 
regarding  the  essentially  English  characteristics  to  be 


ioo    PRESENT  DAY  AMERICAN  POETRY 

found  in  the  work  of  such  nineteenth-century  American 
writers  as  Cooper,  Simms,  Parkman,  Irving,  Whittier, 
Longfellow,  and  Lowell;  and  the  undeniably  non- 
English  characteristics  evinced  by  such  twentieth- 
century  writers  as  Mrs.  Freeman,  Mrs.  Wharton, 
Garland,  Wister,  Fitch,  Walter,  Untermeyer,  Wheelock, 
Lindsay,  and  Pound. 

I  have  made  no  attempt  to  show  that  our  literature 
is  either  improving  or  becoming  more  distinctively 
American.  Indeed,  in  an  earlier  paragraph  I  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  this  was  not  the  question 
under  discussion  in  this  paper.  But  the  question  is, 
after  all,  inevitable.  A  mere  shifting  of  the  matter 
and  manner  of  American  literature  from  the  English 
to  the  Continental  is  of  slight  advantage  or  conse 
quence  if  it  does  not  augur  a  better  literature  for  the 
future.  The  significant  point,  as  I  see  it,  is  that  a 
breaking  away  from  servile  dependence  upon  the 
literature  of  one  particular  European  nation  is  surely 
a  step  toward  ultimate  independence.  If  in  the  past 
our  literature  has  been  inherently  English,  and  if  at 
present  it  is  partially  English  and  partially  Continental, 
there  is  no  reason  why  in  the  future  it  may  not  be 
emphatically  American. 

History  does  not  lack  for  the  precedent  of  a  nation 
which,  depending  upon  an  older  nation's  language,  has 
nevertheless  developed  a  distinctive  literature  of  its 
own.  There  is  the  wonderful  Greek  pastoral  poetry 
of  ancient  Sicily,  and  the  splendid  Greek  prose  of  old- 
time  Alexandria.  There  are  the  mediaeval  Latin 
writers  of  half  a  dozen  European  countries.  There  is 


IS  OUR  LITERATURE  STILL  ENGLISH?     101 

a  Maeterlinck,  French  in  language,  but  unmistakably 
Belgian  in  race  and  spirit.  There  is  a  brilliant  Nor 
wegian  literature,  expressing  itself  in  the  Danish 
language,  but,  through  the  agency  of  such  geniuses  as 
Ibsen  and  Bjornson,  rising  above  the  literature  of 
Denmark  itself.  We  need  not  hang  our  heads  in  shame 
because  we  have  no  American  language.  We  need  not 
fear  that  dependence  in  language  will  everlastingly 
preclude  independence  in  literature.  Surely  this  won 
derful  cosmopolitan  nation  of  ours — in  many  respects 
the  most  original  nation  on  the  globe — cannot  forever 
lack  a  literature  distinctively  its  own;  a  literature  of 
peculiar  freshness  and  buoyancy,  peculiar  vigor  and 
democracy. 


535SH 


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